David Bowie lives on in many ways and in many places, but at the moment, his presence feels particularly acute while passing through the Broadway-Lafayette Station of New York City’s subway system. The music legend has completely taken over, from lenticular portraits looming over the heads of commuters to posters replacing the typical advertisements and even keepsake Bowie-themed MetroCards. He might have been from London, but Manhattan was Bowie’s home, and Spotify is celebrating that fact with an immersive exhibition acting as an extension of the ‘David Bowie is’ show over at the Brooklyn Museum.

Much of the work seen in the station is Bowie-inspired art, including fan art and reproductions of the pieces on display at the museum. Each piece is paired with a statement of Bowie’s that reflects his love for New York City and how it affected his work.

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“The intricate details that make up the subway takeover speak to key moments in Bowie’s New York City history, many of which were in the neighborhood surrounding Broadway-Lafayette, where he spent over two decades,” says Spotify of the project. “From legendary concerts at Carnegie Hall to recording sessions at studios like Electric Lady and the Magic Shop, the takeover beautifully explores how the City impacted the artist, and speaks to visitors about the truly unforgettable mark of New Yorker David Bowie.”

The David Bowie Subway Takeover went up in April and will be in place through this weekend, so if you’re in the area and haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check it out. If you can’t see it in person, experience it vicariously through the social media hashtag #davidbowieishere.

The same ad spaces that shouted about insurance and laundry detergent last week now contain nothing but fluffy cats, as an art collective uses the internet’s number-one obsession to temporarily transform the London Tube system. The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (CATS) is the result of a Kickstarter campaign by brand-new collective Glimpse aiming to “create a rip in the space time continuum.”

The group raised enough money to buy all of the ad spaces in the Clapham Common station – a total of 68 – for a two-week period, and the new posters feature cats from the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and the Cats Protection charity. The organizers are careful to note that they’re not against advertising per se, but rather hope that the project will “inspire people to think differently about the world and realize they have the power to change it.”

But the broader point – and appeal – of CATS is the citizen takeover of public spaces, with everyday people getting to decide what they want to look at as they navigate their cities. Wouldn’t you rather be surrounded by what essentially functions as an ad for animal rescue services than dozens of posters pushing a bunch of junk corporations want you to purchase?

“Back in February we asked ourselves to ‘imagine a world where friends and experiences were more valuable than stuff you can buy,’” says Glimpse founder James Turner in a post on Medium. “The team began thinking about crowdfunding to replace Tube adverts with something else. Beautiful forests? Time spent with family? Hmmm. We wanted this to become famous, so we needed something the internet would love. Frame it that way and the answer’s obvious. Cats.”

“We’ve been on the news in China, and one of our backers is flying in from America to see his cat in one of the final posters. This project has uncorked a kind of energy that I haven’t experienced before. When you talk about CATS, eyes light up and new ideas start to flow. We don’t know exactly how Glimpse is going to work, but we want to carry this energy with us as we grow up.”

Far from the stereotype of a dark and grungy underground space where you don’t want to touch anything with your bare hands, these 15 standout subway stations are practically art galleries. From the gilded Baroque metros of Moscow to the world’s largest glass dome in Taiwan, these transit stations are worth a stop just to take a look around.

Drassanes, Barcelona

An old subway station in Barcelona, built in 1968, was covered with new surfaces to create an entirely new look, with black resin floors and lightweight white glass-reinforced concrete over the walls. The result is bright and clean with pops of color and a much more updated feel.

Radhuset, Stockholm

Stockholm boasts an incredible 90 decorated subway stations, each of which bearing its own unique visual identity. This one, Radhuset (courthouse) was built in 1975, and resembles a bright red cavern.

Westfriedhof, Munich

The dramatic Westfriedhof station in Munich, Germany features eleven large lamps that cast colored lights onto various areas of the platform. The ceiling and walls are just barely illuminated in a deep, dark blue.

Komsomolskaya, Moscow

The busiest transport hub on the Moscow metro is a showcase of Stalinist architecture, with a palatial Baroque theme in bright yellow. It’s one of the most luxurious subway stations in the world, with marble columns, murals and massive chandeliers.

Toledo, Naples, Italy

The stunning Crater of Luz by Oscar Tusquet Blanca is the centerpiece of the Toledo station in Naples, Italy – one of the most art-filled subway lines in the world. The Naples metro features 13 ‘Art Stations’  that aim to give everyone a close-up look at prime examples of contemporary art.

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Underground But Overboard 15 Extreme Subway Stations

Dark, smelly, filthy and crawling with rats – while this may be an accurate description of many subway stations and tunnels around the world, it definitely doesn’t apply to Barcelona’s Drassanes Station, Stockholm’s Tunnelbana, the Munich U-Bahn or 11 other bold, colorful, modern and just plain beautiful stations. Travelers taking these trains can catch a glimpse of a stunning abandoned station in New York, an ancient river under Athens, a nuclear bunker in North Korea and much more.

Kievskaya Station, Moscow, Russia

(images via: bernt rostad, reibai)

No subway station in the world is quite as elaborate as the ornate Kievskaya, a Moscow Metro station in the Dorogomilovo District. The design, which incorporates marble, decorative chandeliers, gold leafing, scrolled details, mosaics and frescos was chosen in an open competition and built in 1954. The mosaics celebrate the unity between Russia and Ukraine.

Drassanes Station, Barcelona, Spain

(images via: the cool hunter)

Bright and open with a futuristic feel, the new look of Barcelona’s Drassanes Station is dramatically different from the dark, aging 1968 infrastructure. Reinvented by ON-A Arquitectura, the station features lightweight white glass-reinforced concrete coverings that were placed right on top of the old surfaces.

Stockholm Tunnelbana, Sweden

(images via: top elegant homes)

Stockholm’s incredible metro tunnels feature stations that make the raw bedrock a bold architectural feature instead of covering it up with artificial surfaces, giving them the feel of a natural system of subterranean caverns. Some of the rock walls and ceilings have been painted with murals, and all 100 stations feature artwork by 140 artists.

Munich U-Bahn, Germany

(images via: jaime.silva, mike knell)

The U-Bahn in Munich is known for its colorful personality, with rainbow hues painted in many of the tunnels and terminals or applied to the walls as tiles. First built in 1972, the Munich subway system has grown to nearly one hundred stations throughout the city, many of which are designed to modern standards with spacious aisles and decorative lighting.

Nuevos Ministerios, Madrid, Spain

(images via: skyscraper city)

The Madrid Metro is mostly notable for two things: massive murals of the city’s skyline that make riders feel as if they’re at an above-ground station, and the giant eyes that stare down ominously from the pillars. Especially paired with a name like ‘Nuevos Ministerios’ (New Ministries), the station has a vaguely dystopian feel.

City Hall Station, New York, New York

(images via: jalopnik)

Passengers willing to take the 6 train all the way past what used to be the last stop in Brooklyn can now get a special treat: a glimpse of the stunning, long-abandoned City Hall station, which has been closed to the public since it shut down in 1945. The train passes through this station on its way back uptown, and while riders used to be forced off at the Brooklyn Bridge stop, they’re currently allowed to stay on.

Bilbao Metro, Spain

(images via: dalbera, laurenmanning, daquella manera)

Designed by esteemed architecture firm Foster + Partners, the Bilbao Metro is is ultramodern yet vaguely organic with glassy, tubular station entrances at street level and lots of steel in the underground stations. Known as ‘Fosteritos’, the glass station entrances have already become an iconic part of the city’s architecture.

Dubai Metro Stations

(images via: ~pyb, petjam)

Dubai’s 47 railway stations were designed by Aedas of Birmingham to combine both traditional and modern architectural elements. “Their uniquely shell shaped roof, while modern, invokes the heritage of pearl diving – this ancient craft that requires skill and bravery brought early prosperity and is an integral part of Dubai’s history,” says Engineer Abdul Majid Al Khaja, CEO of the Rail Agency at the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority.

Iidabashi Station, Tokyo, Japan

(images via: ventasalud)

Completed in 2000, Tokyo’s Iidabashi station is bright, open and modern with pops of bright green in the form of pillars and a metal web which architect Makoto Watanabe imagines as “interweaving, entangling, expanding, pulsating.” The outside of the station, at street level, features swirling, organically shaped metal and glass designs.

Toronto Museum Station, Canada

(images via: diamond & schmitt architects)

Daniel Libeskind’s addition to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto is quite a dazzling sight, so why have an ordinary subway stop just below it? The station was redesigned by Diamond & Schmitt Architects to include columns inspired by artifacts found within the museum. The five column designs represent Canada’s First Nations, Ancient Egypt, Mexico’s Toltec culture, Ancient Chinese culture and Ancient Greece.

Line A, Prague, Czech Republic

(images via: colourlovers)

The tunnels of Prague’s Line A are covered in a colorful patchwork of metallic tiles in flat, convex and concave shapes in hues of gold, silver, green, blue and red; the color scheme differs by station.

Pyongyang Subway System, North Korea

(images via: wikimedia commons, yeowatzup)

Would you expect one of the world’s most beautiful subway systems to be located in… North Korea? The deepest metro in the world at 360 feet below surface level, the Pyongyang metro network is full of colorful murals of propaganda. Thanks to its depth, the system doubles as an emergency nuclear bunker, and could keep many of the city’s citizens safe in the event of nuclear war.

Iridanos Archaological Site, Athens, Greece

(images via: skyscraper city)

In a city as ancient as Athens, it’s easy to imagine coming upon one important archaeological discovery after another if you dig far enough – and that’s exactly what happened when excavators were working on the city’s metro system. The ancient Iridanos River, long lost, was one of those discoveries, found still flowing right where engineers had planned a subway platform. So, this section of the river – still bearing the vaulted construction completed sometime around 200 C.E. – has now become an archaeological display, the largest in any metro station. Visitors to the green line station platform can walk over the exposed river on a glass walkway.

Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, Shanghai, China

(images via: summer park, .curt)

Sure, the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel in Shanghai is a rather cheesy tourist attraction, with what has been described by a Lonely Planet reviewer as “A slow-moving tram, through a comically low-tech tunnel of antiquated 80’s era rope lights, lasers and car dealership ilk inflatables — narrated only by a psychotic stream of random words”. However true that may be, the pictures are still pretty cool to look at, and the tunnel is definitely among the world’s quirkiest and most unusual.

As all urban exploration enthusiasts know, there are hidden wonders all around us – particularly in rich metropolitan landscapes like New York City. The City Hall subway stop is well-known to NYC history buffs, but until now it hasn’t been easy to catch a glimpse of this unique bit of New York. Recently, a change in Transit Authority rules have made it possible for anyone to see the long-abandoned station – as long as you don’t mind seeing it from a moving train.

The City Hall station was meant to be the crown jewel in the city’s new subway system. It was opened in 1904 as the southern terminal of the Manhattan Main Line (which is now part of the IRT Lexington Avenue Line). Located beneath the public area in front of City Hall, the station has always been considered the most beautiful in the city.

Using an unusually luxurious style of architecture along with colored glass tilework, beautiful skylights and dignified brass chandeliers, the station was undoubtedly unique. Although it was the focus of the subway system groundbreaking ceremony in 1904, City Hall station eventually fell into disuse.

By 1945, only around 600 people per day were being served by the elegantly appointed station. As the trains grew longer and added doors in the middle of the cars, the City Hall platforms were no longer suitable. There were now unsafe gaps between the train cars and the platform; in other stations, the platforms were rebuilt or extended, but this wasn’t an option in the tightly-curved City Hall station.

Rather than undertaking a very costly renovation of the station which was hardly used by the public, the city decided to close it down. The station’s last day of service was December 31, 1945. In the following decades, the station was still used as a loop station for the number 6 train, although passengers were forced to get off at the Brooklyn Bridge station just before the train passed through City Hall.

Recently, the MTA changed the rules to allow passengers to ride through the gorgeous City Hall station. Although the station is still closed to passengers, you can get a glimpse of the former glory of this interesting piece of New York history by sitting back and relaxing while the number 6 makes it loop.