Not every pub in London has a spying room complete with binoculars so patrons can gaze into the windows of the British Intelligence Service across the street – nor does just any old pub have a historic basement so creepy and rife with strange activity that the owners have set up a CCTV system just to keep an eye on it. The Morpeth Arms is definitely one of a kind, used as a prison and transfer facility for inmates waiting to be shipped off to Australia before its conversion into a business.

If you think this sounds like a publicity schtick to get more tourists to spend fists full of quid on burgers and ale, you’re not far off, but there’s a layer of fascinating history beneath the hype. Built in 1845, this public house at 58 Millbank in London’s Pimlico district was originally established as a deportation facility. A tunnel system running beneath the city streets carried convicts from the old Millbank prison to a holding area beneath the pub, while they waited for transportation to whisk them away. The prison itself, which featured six wings attached to a central chapel like the petals of a flower, closed in 1890 and was ultimately demolished.

The basement isn’t open to the public, but customers can see into it via a live feed on a prominently placed monitor, over a sign reading ‘Can you see the haunted prisoner?’ According to Atlas Obscura, employees have reported glimpses of inexplicable movement, items going missing and a general sense of unease. The beer barrels are kept in the area beside the former cells, which are just dank, mildewy rooms off the arched brick tunnels.

The tongue-in-cheek spying room, meanwhile, really does look in on MI6. It has its own bar, a Mata Hair theme and is, unsurprisingly, often packed full of actual spies from across the street, who sometimes bring members of the FBI with them. So, fair warning, if you’re running from the Feds, find ye another pub on Millbank to patronize.

An island in France populated by ‘living machines’ that seem to be torn straight from the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, Les Machines de L’ile has delighted visitors since 2007, and now they’re embarking on a quest to complete the largest hanging garden since ancient Babylon. The unusual artistic and cultural project is set within old shipyards surrounded by two branches of the Loire River, known for its massive mechanical elephant, 82-foot-high Marine Worlds Carousel and a gallery of the illustrations, models and films that went into the making of their machines.

The Heron’s Tree is one of the project’s greatest achievements, but it’s been under construction for over a decade. 114 feet tall and 160 feet in diameter, the tree allows visitors to climb onto the backs or wings of mechanical herons to fly over the tree’s hanging gardens. Les Machines de L’ile have launched a Kickstarter to expand it to its full potential, with a projected cost of 35 million euros and a new opening date of 2022.

The crowdfunding campaign just opened on March 6th and has already exceeded its goal by a long shot, but you can still back it for rewards like posters, sketches, hats and engraved plaques. Whether or not you contribute, you’re going to want to add this fantastical island of automatons to your travel wish list.

“Since the opening of the machines of the island in 2007, we are studying a tree-specific ecosystem through the prototype branch, already visited by more than 4 million visitors. This branch prefigures one of the 22 branches that will constitute the Heron Tree. This allowed us to test the strength, safety and greening of these hanging gardens. The containers that house the plants allow trees to be planted within the Tree itself. Currently, we are experimenting with the implementation of micro landscapes in the forks of branches.”

“In the Herons’ Tree, the hanging gardens are accessible via a double helix staircase located inside the trunk: one to go up, the other to go down. The visitors walk along lush branches and footbridges to go from branch to branch before reaching the top of the tree. From the different galleries 30m (100ft) above the ground, they will discover the Herons, the river Loire, and Nantes. The walking circuit through the hanging gardens ends at a patio bar built into a lower branch. The hanging gardens can accommodate 300 visitors.”

Has life in the modern world given you a simmering sense of resentment, anxiety and anger you wish you could unleash upon some highly breakable objects? Maybe you’re fuming over your job and fantasize about smashing a copy machine, Office Space-style, or maybe you’d like to give a certain public institution a piece of your mind. In Russia, you can pay by the hour to take out these aggressions on the environment of your choice – safely, legally and as violently as you like.

For a fee ranging from $150 to $450 depending on the complexity, ’Rage Rooms’ by Debosh can be customized to your liking. They’ll design your personalized smashable room to resemble your workplace, apartment or any other space you prefer, or you can bring your own breakables and clean up after yourself for a mere $50. Prices also vary by ‘difficulty level,’ depending on whether you want to smash some dishes and televisions or rent out a larger space with a group of friends, with more to destroy.

Founder Alexei Barinskiy says he originally owned a flea market, and was often left with too much merchandise that wasn’t selling. He wondered if he could find a way to get rid of it while still making a profit. Shortly thereafter, Debosh was born. They provide the space, breakables, hard hats, protective eyewear and highly satisfying sledgehammers, clubs and baseball bats to do the job.

“Destroyery is a kid of entertainment where people can do things they are restricted to do in everyday life, or maybe such things are just hard to do or they may have really bad consequences,” notes the website (translated from Russian.) “For example, at Destroyery you can smash a TV with a sledgehammer, take off safety goggles, dust down and go home pleased and relieved.”

“However, Destroyery is not just about crushing things with a hammer. You can come on your own or with your friends and experience a new feeling of freedom and permissiveness like when you were a kid, causing mischief and your mom went off on you for broken things at home or your dad smacked your ass for smashing a window.”

It’s kind of nuts, but it’s also hard to deny the draw. Maybe the idea will catch on in the United States, too.

Stairs spiral up to the sky in strange configurations, going nowhere, in a tangle of surrealist sculptural structures in a Mexican jungle. Why is this series of concrete wonders hidden within the lush vegetation of Xilitlha, and who put it there? The answer lies within the mind of Edward James, a 20th century art collector described by Salvador Dali as “crazier than all the Surrealists together.” If Dali is calling you crazy, that probably says something, and photos of James’ creations reveal a visionary thinker on par with the artists he so admired.

James, a poet and well-to-do heir who was once painted by René Magritte, was a passionate and early supporter of Surrealism, sponsoring Salvador Dali in a crucial early period of his career during which he produced some of his most valuable works. A 1978 documentary called “The Secret Life of Edward James” shows off some of his personal art collection, as well as his quirky refurbishment of Monkton House, a small 20th century house plastered with surreal interior designs. He was certainly an interesting character, which explains how Las Pozas came about.

Built more than 2,000 feet above sea level about seven hours (drive) north of Mexico City, ‘Las Pozas’ was named for the natural pools and waterfalls that characterize the site. James saw it as the ideal romantic spot for his vision of a “Garden of Eden set up.” Between 1949 and 1984, he built dozens of towering concrete structures around the pools, each of them given names like “The House on Three Floors Which Will in Fact Have Five or Four or Six,” and “The House with a Roof Like a Whale.”

The sculptures were conceived by James and his guide Plutarco Gastélum, who helped him scout the site, after his living orchid garden decades in the making was destroyed by a blizzard. The concrete ‘flowers’ would be everlasting, much hardier than anything organic he could grow. It took a crew of about 150 people to build them all. It cost more than $5 million to construct, a sum James raised by selling his collection of Surrealist art at auction.

After James’ death in 1984, Las Pozas was opened to the public, and it’s know owned by Fondo Xilitlha, a foundation overseeing its preservation and restoration.

Top photo: Wikimedia Commons; all other photos: Victor DeLaqua, Julia Faveri and Herbert Loureiro/ArchDaily

It’s true that as we get older, we lose most of the rich imagination that had us drawing monsters and telling strange stories as kids, the world seeming less magical with each year that passes. But sometimes, we grown-ups still manage to cling to some of that creativity, allowing us to design and build stuff that’s just as cool through the eyes of adults as it is to kids. These epic playgrounds around the world are a tribute to that wonder, curiosity and adventurous spirit, whether they’re exclusively for little ones or open for us to enjoy, too.

The City Museum Outdoor Playground, St. Louis, Missouri

Mesh tunnels arch into the sky, airplanes are elevated on bright blue steel beams, and other metal parts criss-cross each other across a large open courtyard at what was once the 10-story International Shoe company in St. Louis. The 600,000-square-foot City Museum, designed by artist Bob Cassilly in 1997 and has been continually updated and improved by a group of 20 artists known as the Cassilly Crew since his death in 2011. Those two repurposed planes are just the beginning of a chaotic arrangement of play equipment including slides, caves, tunnels, ball pits, a rooftop Ferris wheel and a school bus that juts out from a ledge. It’s delightfully weird, and there’s nothing else quite like it in the world.

The Crooked Houses by Monstrum, Denmark

There’s a lot more to this weird little collection of crooked houses than meets the eye, as the design is actually inspired by local slaughterhouses. According to Monstrum, a creative firm building playgrounds all over the world, the area was once home to dairies and slaughterhouses before it became urbanized, and their design reflects that history. Use climbing grips to scale the sides of the houses, or attempt to balance on beams leading from one window to the next.

Crocheted Alligator Playground by Olek, Sao Paulo

This gigantic alligator-shaped playground in Brazil was already cool enough before crochet-bombing artist Olek brought her signature colorful encasing to give it a new look in 2012. It took the artist several weeks to cover the alligator in Brazilian ribbons and acrylic yarn. The internet is so enamored with Olek’s embellishment that it’s hard to find a photo of what the playground usually looks like.

Woods of Net at the Hakone Open Air Museum, Japan

Another artist integrates woven fibers to playgrounds in a different way, making her hand-knitted creations interactive elements for kids to play on. “Woods of Net” at the Hakone Open Air Museum in Japan is a beautiful example of Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam’s work, and took her an entire year to finish. The playground features trampoline-like knitted nets with pendulous growths on the underside functioning as swings.

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Magical Monsters Kid Size Castles 12 Epically Imaginative Playgrounds