The Secret Life of Hidden Places : Hidden Rooms, Clandestine Passageways, and the Curious Minds That Made Them

You found a key... The Labyrinth. The Sunken Manor. The Gateway to Hell-do you dare enter?This wondrous guide for the curious and the intrepid takes readers on a lushly photographed and lyrically written tour of eighteen of the world's most captivating architectural mysteries.Delve into both the secretive places themselves and the eccentric and obsessive minds that created them.Visit a chamber of skulls high in the Swiss Alps, a Japanese temple full of traps, a Parisian apartment locked and untouched since World War II, a Prohibition-era speakeasy in Washington, DC, and a spooky "initiation" well in Portugal built by a secret society.How far down can you climb before losing your nerve?