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When planning a trip, it’s easy to feel torn between wanting to experience a city’s must-see iconic landmarks and discovering something unknown to the most passersby. As it happens, there’s a third category that checks off both of these things at once: unknown spaces hiding in extremely well-known places.
These secret gems can add an extra layer
of exploration to checklist destinations like Times Square or the Eiffel
Tower—if you know where to find them. We combed through the Atlas to
pull out 11 of the least obvious spaces lurking in the most obvious
places.
1 spot from this list. As always, you will be surprised at what we have in stores for you. Lets begin!5. Gustave Eiffel’s Secret Apartment
When the Eiffel Tower opened in 1889 to
universal wonder and acclaim, designer Gustave Eiffel soaked up the
praise. If that wasn’t enough, it was soon revealed that he had built
himself a small apartment near the top of the world wonder, garnering
him the envy of the Paris elite in addition to his new fame.
Eiffel’s private apartment was not large,
but it was cozy. In contrast to the steely industrial girders of the
rest of the tower, the apartment was “furnished in the simple style dear
to scientists,” according to reporter Henri Girard. The walls were
covered in warm wallpaper and the furniture included soft chintzes,
wooden cabinets, and even a grand piano, creating a comfortable
atmosphere perched nearly 1,000 feet in the air.
According to Atlas Obscura, the tiny apartment was perched 1000 feet in the air, providing Eiffel with a bird’s-eye view of 1890s-era Paris. He furnished the lofty abode with wallpaper, cabinets, furniture, oil paintings, and a grand piano. There was also a small adjacent room with laboratory equipment, which allowed Eiffel to conduct meteorological observations, The Independent writes.
While many elite members of the public clamored to rent the space, Eiffel shunned their exorbitant offers. Instead, he used it to greet illustrious guests like Thomas Edison (who gave him a phonograph machine as a gift), or as a quiet space for solitary reflection.
Author Jill Jonnes provides a great visual image of what an evening was like in Eiffel’s private apartment in her 2010 book Eiffel’s Tower: The Thrilling Story Behind Paris’s Beloved Monument and the Extraordinary World's Fair That Introduced It. She describes one evening that Edison and other luminaries spent in Eiffel’s aerie:
4. Inside Mt Rushmore
Mount Rushmore is, without a doubt, quite a marvel of modern engineering. Blasting almost 60 foot tall faces into the side of a mountain was something that many thought a ridiculously difficult idea to actually pull off, but artist Gutzon Borglum was able to pull it off without too much of a hitch. He also ensured that an extra space was created inside of the sculpture itself in order to house a room that was to be very special indeed.
The room, located behind Abraham Lincoln’s spacious forehead, is called the Hall of Records. It was supposed to contain a collection of everything the monument stood for and a record of all the work put into the site. Borglum came to this decision after considering the fact that, for all their elegance and grandeur, not much is known about ancient monuments.
He wanted to ensure his work would remain relevant and give future civilizations a proper rundown of Mount Rushmore’s monumental development, as well as providing any necessary information about the mountain itself. The work on this room was begun in 1938 and included a massive, 18 foot tall doorway. The room itself measured 75 feet long and 35 feet tall, with incredibly high ceilings.
It was expected that visitors to the Hall of Records would make their way up an 800 foot long staircase built directly into the mountain walls. Upon reaching the doorway they would then have been presented with a gold-plated eagle featuring an impressive 38 foot wingspan. Unfortunately this project fell far short of these lofty goals. That being said, what was completed is still quite a feat and you get the sense that the completed room would have been tremendously grand.
When Borglum died in 1941 the government decided that they would be dropping the addition. Their reasoning behind this was that it would be far too expensive while also further delaying the grand opening of their newest monument. With the busts completed they halted work and left Borglum’s signature Hall of Records almost completely forgotten about. In 1998, however, a group of Borglum’s surviving family successfully petitioned the government to at least include a number of tablets made from porcelain at the site. These were lowered into a hole in the floor in a type of time capsule.
3. Secret Compartment in Leonardo da Vinci Statue
The monumental bronze statue with marble base is the work of the Bulgarian artist Assen Peikov, who expatriated to Italy during World War II. When the city of Rome announced a competition for a work of art to be installed at Fiumicino Airport, Peikov won, and the resulting 60-foot statue of the Renaissance giant holding his famous “aerial screw” design would become the sculptor’s largest and best-known work.
In 2006, the statue needed renovation. During the course of this work, one of the workers made a strange discovery: a small hatch, located at a height of about 30 feet, approximately in the middle of the statue. The hatch was carefully opened and inside were found two parchments, still in perfect condition.
One of the parchments, written in classical Latin, tells the history of the area where the airport now stands, going back to ancient times and including descriptions of the landscape that predated human development. The other parchment provided a list of the people who attended the unveiling, mentioning (among others) Giovanni Gronchi (President of the Italian Republic in 1960), and Giulio Andreotti (Minister of Defence in 1960 who would go on to become Prime Minister).
2. The Tower of The Winds, Vatican
The Vatican is absolutely chock full of secret and mysterious rooms that none of us will ever see or even hear about. Those we do know about are generally the source of continuing controversies for the church. One of the most controversial rooms, for example, depicts erotic frescoes all over its walls that are incredibly suggestive in nature and not at all what we’d expect in the headquarters of the Catholic church.
This room was painted over once, but recently restored to show Venus hanging out with her legs wide open in all her beckoning magnificence and Pan furiously pleasuring himself, among many others. It is, understandably, not something the Pope wants to open up to the public anytime soon.
The tower was capable of tracking the movements of heavenly bodies and also measured wind direction. That’s not all that amazing today until you’re reminded again that this engineering marvel was built in 1578. That’s well before Galileo was condemned by the same group of people for declaring that the earth was round and revolved around the sun.
This makes us think that the pope’s astronomers weren’t all that great at what they did, but we should assume that they were really only ‘yes men’ anyway. One of the coolest features is a little hole in a wall that allows the sun’s rays, every year on March 21 to point to noon on a rosette on the floor, signalling the spring equinox. While not too much to put together at that time we still think it’s an awesome touch.
1. One Times Square
Despite its location in one of the most
expensive and photographed places in the world, the building at One
Times Square is nearly completely empty. Walgreens occupies the first
floor, and leases everything up through the 21st floor, but has chosen
to leave the building vacant because the advertising on its sides brings
in enough money to sustain it.
The building does have one other tenant,
however, and that is Jeff Straus, who runs the famous New Year’s Eve
celebration from his 22nd-floor office. Above him is the New Year’s ball
itself, located year-round on a metal roof deck, waiting for its annual
moment of glory.
by Sujeet Kumar
