New York City’s modernity makes it difficult to imagine a time when it was anything but a land of skyscrapers, subways, and gridlock. But its origins are indeed humble. To properly explore the city’s roots, one must start with its nexus: Lower Manhattan.

NYC was built from the southern tip up. A walking tour of Lower Manhattan is refreshingly rambling as its narrow streets predate the grid system imposed on the remainder of the island starting in the early 1800s. Consider the following a best-of history guide for the next time you’re in the Big Apple.

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10 Collect Pond

The area currently occupied by Chinatown’s Columbus Park sits atop what was once Lower Manhattan’s primary source of fresh water: the (eventually) aptly named Collect Pond.

Before the Europeans, the Lenape Native Americans had a settlement along its shoreline. In the 1540s, the French established a fortified trading post on one of its lush islands. Starting in the early 18th century, the British used the pond alternately as a summer picnic spot and a winter skating rink.

Around this time, however, Collect Pond took a turn for the . . . well, gross. A number of tanneries moved into the area. (Mulberry Street, which overlooked the pond, became known as “Slaughterhouse Street.”) By the 1800s, Collect Pond had collected enough waste that it was deemed “a very sink and common sewer.”^[1]

In 1807, the city started construction on a canal—modern-day Canal Street—that would funnel the polluted water into the Hudson River. A hasty drainage job left a marshy, mosquito-ridden landfill upon which wealthy slumlords built tenements for the poor, including many newly arriving immigrants.

9 The Five Points Slums

Built partially on land filled in over fetid Collect Pond and famously depicted in Martin Scorsese’s epic 2002 film Gangs of New York, The Five Points was loosely bound by Centre Street to the west, the Bowery to the east, Canal Street to the north, and Park Row to the south.

The neighborhood’s name derives from a starlike confluence of two crossing streets and a third that terminates at their intersection, forming “points.” Those thoroughfares were Anthony Street (now Worth), Cross Street (now Mosco), and Orange Street (now Baxter). This guide^[2] shows its approximate location today.

The Five Points was the filthiest, most congested district in an already flighty, overcrowded Lower Manhattan. Living conditions were crammed and squalid. Shoddily constructed tenements on unstable, poorly drained ground quickly became dilapidated.

The unsanitary, overpopulated conditions became breeding grounds for cholera, tuberculosis, typhus, malaria, and yellow fever. Worse, the problem fed upon itself as hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly poor immigrants poured into New York annually, providing slumlords with a steady stream of desperate souls to exploit.

Crime, organized and otherwise, was rampant. For most of the 19th century, The Five Points is alleged to have had the highest murder rate of any slum in the world. Prostitution and gambling reigned, including the gentlemanly sport of rat fighting.

The Five Points and adjacent Lower East Side served as the backdrop for James Riis’s mesmerizing 1890 book How the Other Half Lives, which paved the way for safety, sanitation, and economic reforms throughout Lower Manhattan.

8 Castle Clinton

Before Ellis Island, there was Castle Clinton, the nation’s first official immigration processing center. The castle was first constructed due to the growing tensions between the United States and Britain in the early 19th century. The 28-cannon fort, which was garrisoned but never saw action during the ensuing War of 1812, occupied what was then an artificial island off Manhattan’s southern tip.

The locale has a dark legacy. After the Lenape Native Americans refused to pay Dutch settlers taxes in the 1640s, the governor decided that a fitting penalty was slaughtering every man, woman, and child . . . and decorating Castle Clinton’s predecessor, Fort Amsterdam, with their heads.^[3]

The castle received its current name in 1815 in honor of outgoing NYC Mayor DeWitt Clinton. Upon becoming state governor, he led the effort to build the Erie Canal, a 584-kilometer (363 mi) engineering marvel connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via New York’s Hudson River.

No longer a military necessity, Castle Clinton became, in turn, a beer garden, exhibition hall, opera house, and theater before transitioning to an immigration center in 1855. It remained in this role until 1890. Then the immigration center was moved to Ellis Island.

True to the Castle Clinton’s Lower Manhattan roots, many immigrants were cheated out of their possessions by corrupt workers, and some even died awaiting entry into the US. Its island now filled in and connected to the mainland, Clinton Castle still stands today at the southern endpoint of (what else) Bridge Street. Tours are readily available.

7 Fraunces Tavern

Up for a pint? Duck into the oldest bar in New York City: Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street.

Constructed in 1719, the watering hole carries the name of Samuel Fraunces, who operated the establishment as the Queen’s Head Tavern during the 18th century. During the Revolutionary War, Fraunces and his tavern were part of a spy ring undermining the British occupation of New York. (The British held New York for nearly the entire war, necessitating an intricate web of espionage and sabotage terrifically depicted in the TV series TURN: Washington’s Spies.)

Following the cessation of hostilities, George Washington held a farewell party at the tavern for high-ranking Continental Army officers. The joint also undoubtedly had its share of revelers on November 25, 1783, when the British formally departed the former colonies from nearby Evacuation Day Plaza.

In 1789, Fraunces became newly inaugurated President George Washington’s first chief steward, overseeing the head of state’s household affairs. Fraunces died in 1795 while Washington was still in office.

In recent years, Fraunces has become the center of a new controversy: his race. After being portrayed as white for centuries, many historians now believe he was a (free) black man.^[4]

In addition to operating as a bar and restaurant, Fraunces Tavern now features a museum dedicated to Lower Manhattan’s Revolutionary War era.

6 The African Slave Trade And Burial Grounds

Although slavery is typically more associated with the US South, New York City was the second-largest slave-owning city in the British colonies in America in the mid-18th century. (Charleston, South Carolina, was the biggest.)

Ironically (and tragically), most of the macabre buying and selling of human beings transpired at a street now synonymous with commerce: Wall Street. At 74 Wall Street, a 42-story building housing luxury condominiums rests over what was once New York’s primary slave market.

The “peculiar institution’s” history in New York is as old as the city itself. The first slaves arrived in New Amsterdam in 1626, just two years after the Dutch settled there. Slave labor was instrumental in building defensive structures for the small, vulnerable European population—including the wall for which the modern street is named.^[5]

Today, the only remaining evidence of the slave market is a plaque erected in 2015. However, nearby is the African Burial Ground Memorial, the oldest and largest known excavated burial ground in North America for persons of African origin. Unsurprisingly, blacks were not permitted to be buried in cemeteries alongside whites. Deceased African Americans, both free and enslaved, were relegated to mass gravesites.

The memorial sits atop a site that went undiscovered until 1989, when preconstruction activities for a federal office tower found some 15,000 skeletons dating from the 1630s through the 1790s. Slavery was not outlawed in New York State until 1827.

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5 City Hall Park

The grassy grounds surrounding New York’s City Hall represent perhaps the only sizable patch of land in Lower Manhattan never to be fully developed. The original Dutch settlers used the area as a public commons. The space took a darker turn when the British seized the colony in 1664 and hosted public executions.^[6]

More death and despair followed. In 1775, the British began work on a prison named Bridewell. Soon, the American Revolution broke out in full force, giving the redcoats more pressing priorities than proper penitentiaries. The unfinished building—which even lacked windowpanes to protect from bitter cold winters—was a pit of suffering and death for hundreds of POWs until the war’s conclusion.

In the years immediately preceding the war, the grounds became a popular spot for “Liberty poles,” erected to inspire insurrectionist spirits and often to signal covert conventions of anti-British conspirators. An 18th-century game of whack-a-mole ensued, with pro-independence groups like the Sons of Liberty putting poles up as fast as British soldiers could chop them down.

The poles were figurative lightning rods that made bloody confrontation inevitable. In January 1770, British soldiers were attacked mid-removal by patriots. The subsequent skirmish on nearby Golden Hill, which preceded the Boston Massacre by several weeks, is where modern-day Gold Street gets its name.

Along with a stone plaque, a 20-meter-tall (66 ft) replica of the sawed-off liberty pole was installed in 1921.

4 The Catacombs At Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The most famous burial ground in Lower Manhattan is undoubtedly the graveyard at Trinity Church at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. The cramped site is the final resting place of several famous figures, most notably Alexander Hamilton.

However, another gravesite offers a much more immersive experience. At Old St. Patrick’s Church in modern-day SoHo—far humbler confines than the current polished behemoth in Midtown—visitors can tour catacombs where the city’s wealthier Catholic residents sealed themselves for all eternity.^[7]

Both the catacombs and the high wall in the adjacent church graveyard were intended to prevent something widespread in 19th-century Lower Manhattan: grave robbing. Understandably, avoiding post-death looting took some, well, loot, a price point that limited the catacombs to especially prominent New Yorkers. Several members of the Delmonico restaurant family are there, as is the man credited with bringing opera to NYC.

One interment of interest is Thomas Eckert, who served in several capacities, including presidential bodyguard, in the administration of Abraham Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln wanted Eckert for exactly that role while he took in a play at a Washington, DC, theater. Unfortunately, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused permission for Eckert to go.

Allegedly, Stanton claimed that he had an important task for Eckert that night. Controversy remains about the real reason Eckert wasn’t guarding Lincoln’s viewing box when John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln later that night.

3 Mob Hit Hunting In Little Italy

Despite being a shell of its former self—its footprint has been severely compacted by Chinatown from the south and Nolita from the north, and its restaurants are now mostly tourist traps—Little Italy is still a great place to see where some high-profile mafiosi got whacked.

At the famed Umberto’s Clam House at 132 Mulberry Street, Colombo crime family hit man Crazy Joe Gallo was enjoying dinner with his family, including his 10-year-old daughter. The date was April 7, 1972—Gallo’s birthday.

Sometime during his second helping of shrimp and scungilli (not a bad choice for a last meal), gunmen entered the restaurant and opened fire. The shooting marked the first time a mobster was murdered in front of his family, so he must have made someone really mad.

Another high-profile murder took place in the late 1930s at the site of the former ‘O Sole Mio restaurant, also on Mulberry Street. The grisly photo of an unidentified mob hit victim sprawled out on the street made headlines across New York. Unfortunately, the site now houses a tacky souvenir shop selling “I Heart NY” T-shirts to clueless tourists.^[8]

Slightly outside the boundary of Lower Manhattan, the Museum of the American Gangster at 80 St. Mark’s Place offers a deep dive into mob history.

2 The City’s Oldest Sites

New York is a city where the only thing constant is change. In fact, only one structure remains from the 1600s (its first century of European inhabitation): a cemetery. Coincidentally, it is the final resting place of the city’s first Jewish settlers.

In modern-day Chinatown, the site holds 107 graves with headstones that have remained surprisingly legible. The cemetery was used at least through the American Revolution as it includes the remains of several fallen soldiers.

The oldest surviving building is the aforementioned Fraunces Tavern, but many historians discount this distinction due to its series of renovations. The title of oldest original building goes to St. Paul’s Chapel, which dates to 1764. The house of worship includes a pew where George Washington prayed on the day of his presidential inauguration.

Nearby, the Edward Mooney House was completed in 1789 and has served as a private residence, hotel, brothel, and saloon over its long history. At the turn of the 20th century, it was headquarters to an odd bloke named Chuck Connors, the self-proclaimed “mayor of Chinatown.”

He led voyeuristic whites on slumming tours through the rowdy Bowery bars and Chinese opium dens. Notably, Connors once helped future legendary songwriter Irving Berlin get a waiting gig at a local restaurant.

Today, the Chinese characters adorning the building’s second-floor facade showcase the staying power of Chinatown.^[9]

1 Chinatown

Chinatown is the only substantial ethnic neighborhood remaining in Manhattan. Others like African-American Harlem, Latino Washington Heights, and especially Little Italy have long been whittled away by gentrification.

For first-time visitors, Chinatown is simultaneously inviting and intimidating. Decrepit yet delicious dumpling houses, Eastern medicine pharmacies showcasing vast rows of herbal remedies, shops brazenly peddling dubiously authentic clothing and handbags, and cavernous dim sum restaurants—including the 800-seat, soccer-pitch-sized Jing Fong—line the narrow, typically crowded streets.^[10]

Chinese immigrants began settling in Lower Manhattan in the 1870s. As Easterners in a Western world who were viewed as “others” even by other new arrivals from Ireland, Italy, and Germany, the Chinese developed a necessary insularity further exacerbated by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. This limited the number of Chinese allowed to immigrate to the US.

Like other ethnic groups in 19th-century Lower Manhattan, the Chinese formed violent gangs. Known as tongs, the gangs ran opium dens, prostitution rings, and gambling halls. One narrow Chinatown alley, the elbow-shaped Doyers Street, became notorious as the “Bloody Angle” for a deadly inter-tong battle that left several gang members dead.

The killers escaped via another fascinating Chinatown anomaly: a winding series of underground tunnels used for illegal smuggling and quick getaways from law enforcement. Today, nearby Chatham Square offers the last accessible vestige of this tunnel network, known today as the Wing Fat Shopping Arcade.

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About The Author: Christopher Dale (@ChrisDaleWriter) writes on politics, society, and sobriety issues. His work has appeared in Daily Beast, NY Daily News, NY Post, and Parents.com, among other outlets.

One day, once the ‘great re-opening’ occurs, we all hope that international travel with commence again. In that spirit, why not plan a totally off-the-wall, weird tour of Europe? That question was rhetorical…

From magical roads to vampire preventions methods, beer gods to little slices of America, Europe is full of wacky, weird and wonderful attractions, all ready to open back up and accept visitors. Take the list, make your booking (when safe to do so) and get ready to see Europe in a different way.

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10 Tring Natural History Museum, Tring, England

On the surface, this isn’t all that weird an attraction to visit. This museum is affiliated with the larger ‘National History Museum’ located in London, effectively making the Tring site a regional outpost for one of the world’s best-known museums. But a mere outpost it is not—the museum dates back to 1889, originally built to house the private collection of taxidermy animals amassed by Lionel Walter Rothschild (yes, one of the Rothschilds of banking dynasty fame. Keep your tinfoil hat on…) The museum has maintained an impressive, invaluable number of the Victorian-era exhibits and remains one of the most important collections of taxidermy anywhere in the world.

Not that weird, though, is it? Wait until you see the fleas. The museum’s collection of dressed-up Mexican fleas is quite a sight… if you look really close, of course. Sold as tourist curios over a century ago, these colourful little beasties are quite bizarre.

What would you do with them once purchased, invite guests to look at them through a huge spyglass? Yes, that is exactly what was expected (after a dinner party and good old glug of some laudanum-laced absinthe, most likely). Now you can go to Tring and see an extensive collection of these oddities. Jeez, the things people used to find entertaining, eh? Ok maybe things haven’t improved that much.

9 The Magic Hill, Dundalk, Ireland

Any place with ‘magic’ in the name seems like it’s bound to be lame – probably just an awful kiddies’ theme park with slow rides and washed-up losers parading around in costumes. The ‘Magic Hill’ in Ireland certainly bucks this trend. It is gloriously weird.

The road is found in the countryside beyond Dundalk in County Louth, Ireland. It runs up or down, depending on which side of the road your travelling, and displays a very curious effect – cars that are left in neutral (not in gear) and with the parking break off will start to gently roll uphill. The effect remained unexplained until Dr. Eoghan Sweeny-O’Connor from Trinity College Dublin’s “Department of Celtic Sciences” discovered that it was the combination of residual magical energies emitted by a nearby colony of leprechauns paired with the gasses occasionally emitted by fating banshees passing by that caused the laws of physics to reverse.

Or, if you haven’t decided to write a listicle whilst drinking a bottle of Black Bush whiskey, it’s just an optical illusion; the countryside surrounding the road slopes in such a way as to trick you into thinking the road slopes that way also. In fact, the road goes ever so slightly the opposite way, causing the effect. Still, if you find yourself in Dundalk with time to kill, why not go there, leave your car in neutral* and go up and down the Magic Hill. Calling out “Weeeee!” whilst doing so is a hallowed Irish tradition, and thus obligatory.

*WARNING – expect to get rear-ended by at least 1 tractor when doing the above action

8 Ride And Eat On The Bustronome, Paris, France

Paris isn’t short on nice places to eat. The main issue with all the amazing restaurants in France’s capital is that they don’t move. Enter the Bustronome, a mobile restaurant that lets see the city and eat some pan seared beef cheeks with carrots followed by a lemon and meringue intermezzo, all at the same time… the sites and the food, not the beef and the meringue, that is.

You’ll travel around the ‘City of Light’ in a converted double-decker bus, eating a six course sampling menu (four courses for lunchtime bookings), listening to gentle music and take in the sights. The roof has also been converted to a fully transparent one, making the guest feel as though they are dining on a cruise ship sailing gently through on of the world’s foremost metropolises. Bon Appétit!

7 Mini Hollywood, Tabernas, Spain

What could be more surprising than the fact that Spain has Europe’s only sandy desert? Probably the fact that there is an amusement park with a Wild West style town plonked in the middle of it.

This theme park has a pretty cool history – back in the age of the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ (the 1960s), the site was used to film such classics as Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ and ‘A Few Dollars More’. It was also used to film (the far less impressive) ‘A Town Called Mercy’ episode of the re-booted ‘Doctor Who’ series in 2012.

The park boasts a panoply of live-action stunt-based events every day – a bank raid, gunfights and even a re-enactment of the death of famed Old West bandit Jesse James. There’s a zoo, a swimming pool and a play barn for the kids. Plus, mercifully for parents, a saloon. No opium dens or bordellos; the period specific authenticity only stretches so far, it seems.

6 Spreuerhofstraße, Reutlingen, Germany

There are plenty of streets in major cities all over the globe where it would be prudent for a person to take a deep breath and hold whilst walking – there are some pretty polluted, unsanitary places around. In Reutlingen, a beautiful medieval city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, there is a street where a sharp intake of breath is required for a very different reason—it’s 31cm (12.3 inches) wide. The narrow lane was built in 1727 as a part of a reconstruction in the city after a fire had raised large tranches of it the previous year. A better city planner may have decided against building this titchy walkway, but hey, it’s there.

Now, according to the Guinness Book of World records, this is the narrowest street in the world. But there is a street in France – ‘L’Andouno’ in the commune of Gassin – which is 29cm at its narrowest point. But a shiny, annual almanac has deemed the German street as the narrowest there is, so that’s the one you should visit… as long as you don’t down several steins of beer and a couple of bratwursts before you try to, that is.

5 Rynek Underground, Kravov, Poland

Underground museum with innovative light projections on smoke? Awesome. Preserved cemetery with an exhibit on anti-vampire burial customs? Uh… how many stairs are there to climb back out?

Your entrance to this popular museum is pretty unspectacular – a nondescript little door. But as you descend, your welcomed by a short film projected onto a wall of smoke that gives an overview of the site and its history. That’s more like it!

The exhibits make heavy use of modern tech, with touch screens and holograms everywhere. This modern approach to curation contrasts with the fact that you are not really in a museum – you’re walking around an archaeological dig site, albeit a fancily packaged one. The place is vast and dimly lit, so older visitors or families with small kids may want to steer clear. Medieval history buffs, prospective Van Helsings and Indiana Jones wannabes? This is the museum for you.

Located in one of Europe’s most amazing cities, this cool museum is a great place to visit in order to shake up your city break – nice meal, historic architecture, subterranean vampire-deterring graveyard experience. Not exactly a trip to the Louvre, is it?

4 Fekete SasPatikamúzeum, Székesfehérvár, Hungray

From an uncovered historical site found underground, we now go to a preserved historical site found on a normal Hungarian street. Back in 1688, just after the nation’s liberation from the Ottoman Empire, the first ‘modern’ pharmacist (‘modern’ insofar as he was a guy who didn’t try to cure your plague after consulting chicken entrails) set up shop in the central Hungarian city of Székesfehérvár. After changing hands a few times over the centuries, the site continued to operate right up until 1971.

A few years later, it passed to the King István museum. The shop was restored and renovated, the beautiful baroque wood carvings polished and patched, and the centuries of collected pharmaceutical artefacts collected and put on display. As you walk around, you can marvel at the ornate carvings and wonder if that was one of the last sights some ill Hungarian saw before getting prescribed some powdered mummy to cure his TB.

This place is really stunning, a glimpse of a bygone era and a lost world – a world emerging from the middle ages into the age of reason.

3 The Visnes Statue of Liberty, Karmoy, Norway

This is the perfect place to visit if you like classic Americana but also value your respiratory health. Or hate bagels. It’s a little slice of freedom near the village of Visnes up in Europe’s frozen north. A scaled down Lady Liberty. God bless, uh, Norway!

So why is this here, near a small village in northern Europe? Was Abraham Lincoln a fan of pickled herring? Did Martin Luther King Jnr support Tromsø football club? Was Donald Trump actually born in Bergen (please, run with that one conspiracy theorists – it’d be hilarious)?

The truth, although still cool, is a good deal more mundane. It had been rumoured for decades that the copper used in the making of the New York statue came from the French-owned mine in the area. At the centennial celebrations of the statue, researchers uncovered that the copper had indeed come from the Visnes mine. By 1986, tests had been conducted on samples of copper from the statue, confirming that it was indeed from Norway.

2 Statue Of Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton Boulevard, Pristina, Kosovo

A Wild West theme park and randomly located Lady Liberty not American enough for you? How about a giant statue of the good ole’ US of A’s greatest ever president (according to numerous studies conducted by experts at the Clinton Foundation)?

But if chest-clutching, tear-jerking patriotism isn’t your thing, maybe badly rendered statues of famous people is. Since Blackpool, England’s main attraction – no not the tower, the beach or the theme park, we mean ‘Louis Tussaud’s House of Wax’, the single worst wax museum ever—decided to ditch their crappy old waxworks in favour of ‘realistic’ models, this statue in Kosovo can help you scratch that hilariously unrealistic itch. It really looks nothing like him. And that’s just wonderful.

1 The Altar Of Ragutis, Vilnius, Lithuania

Beer is god to many people nowadays. It seems that this was true for ancient Lithuanians too, given that central Vilnius still has an altar to the God of Beer found in a small park. Well, Ragutis is one god of beer – there are 2 more in Baltic paganism. I Sveikata!

This may not be the most razzle-dazzle, spectacular entry on this list, but after a good night out in downtown Vilnius, having sampled the beverages the Lithuanian capital has to offer, you can stumble over to thank the god that allowed you to enjoy by lighting a candle at his alter. Just take care not to stand too close, especially if you’ve spilled half your libations on your sweater over the course of the night. Ragutis may unleash a fiery Armageddon if he receives a human sacrifice.

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About The Author: CJ Phillips is a storyteller, actor and writer living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.