The Secret Life of Hidden Places

Introduction

neoteny, a term from evolutionary theory that means the "retention of juvenile characteristics." Physically, it means we have large brains in relation to our body size, like babies.

Mentally, it means we display certain childlike personality traits all the way into adulthood. Traits like curiosity, playfulness, and wonder remain inside us. They are what compel us to travel, read books, wander into a dark cave. No matter where we are, a persistent little voice calls to us, telling us that inside the old, the grim, the forgotten and abandoned even inside the familiar, well-kept, and sump-tuous-there is more than meets the eye, a hidden depth, a secret truth, a chance to discover something wonderful.

The Sunken Manor

Welbeck Abbey Prince of Silence Stovepipe hat

Miles of gaslit tunnels radiate out from beneath the house like the overlong legs of a spider. A subterranean ballroom lurks under a rolling lawn, a vast library beneath a forest. Hydraulic elevators lie silent below blankets of vines, trapdoors forgotten under layers of dust, and all of it built for and used by one reclusive man: the mysterious "burrowing duke."

If the duke went for a walk in the park, it was only at night and always accompanied by a servant carrying a lantern a hundred feet in front of him. Rain or shine, he wielded an umbrella and would flick it open and hide behind it when anyone turned his way. He was also never seen without two large overcoats, a stovepipe hat, and a double ruff.

His bed was specially built with folding panels that would close him up inside.

The Book Thief of Mont Sainte Odile

Hortus Deliciarum (The Garden of delights) first encyclopaedia written by a women

A short walk from the monastery lies what is known as the Pagan Wall, a seven-mile-long mystery that some claim was built by Druids.

The "gentleman thief," as he was called, was let off easy, with a suspended prison sen-tence, a $20,000 fine, and community service at the abbey, helping to catalog the very books that he'd stolen.

The Maze in the Mountain

Derinkuyu in the Nevgehir Province in central Turkey.

In 1962, a local man found a room hidden behind the wall of his house. This room led to staircases, passageways, and, eventually, to an entire city, abandoned and reaching down eighteen floors into the earth.

The Maze in the Mountain

Derinkuyu in the Nevgehir Province in central Turkey.

In 1962, a local man found a room hidden behind the wall of his house. This room led to staircases, passageways, and, eventually, to an entire city, abandoned and reaching down eighteen floors into the earth.

The Oddly Built Temple

Kanazawa Japan

Beneath the city's thick gilding of temples and manicured green-ery, it was a bear trap built for war, a thousand defensible positions disguised as innocent structures, a street plan designed to thwart and befuddle, and a little temple where all these architectural techniques came to a point.

the country still had its divinely appointed emperor on the Chrysanthemum Throne, he was kept quiet and out of the way in his palace in Kyoto. (His main task consisted of "controlling time," aka organizing Japan's complex calendar system, which, though ceremonially important, was somewhat akin to giving a child a toy to occupy him.) It

temple boasts no less than twen-ty-three tiny rooms and twenty-nine staircases, as well as locking doors, secret hiding places, and a tunnel said to connect the temple to the castle, allowing messengers, soldiers, and escaping nobles to travel unseen.

Paper inserts on the stairs allowing soldiers to stab the feet of assailants

Nightingale Floors and Haunted Wells

Nigō Castle, Kyoto

nightingale floors "sing" hauntingly as you walk across them. Built so that the nails beneath the floorboards rub against their clamps and create a gentle chirping noise, these floors were engineered to make eavesdropping-and silent assassinations— all but impossible.

Dolls Eye View

In total, the dollhouse was said to be worth 20,000 to 30,000 guilders ($1.2 to $1.8 million in today's dollars). By comparison, a human-sized house on one of the most elegant canals in Amsterdam cost about 28,000 guilders at the time. On the first floor is the kitchen boasting only the best, mostly fashionable blue-and-white china. It is a fantasy of a kitchen, a so-called "good kitchen" or false-front kitchen that existed in many Dutch houses of the day, a place where you could show guests your fine china and drink tea, while sparing your hair and petticoats from the fumes and grease of the actual kitchen.

miniature castle built by a Hollywood star over a period of thirty years and inspired by fairy lore. Each of its rooms was arranged to look as if a fairy had been present-reading, eating, dancing-and had simply popped out moments before the appearance of you, the visitor. 9 feet tall, cost $500000 ($10000000 today)

Others, like Edgar Rice Burroughs, went all in. The author of Tarzan of the Apes, he wrote Tarzan, Jr. expressly for Moore's dollhouse, a mul-tichapter story about a princess journeying into a forbidden forest, and had the whole endeavor illustrated by his son John.

Between 1935 and 1939, as the Great Depression swept the United States, she took her Fairy Castle on tour, traveling across the United States in three specially built train cars. During this period she raised more than $650,000 (nearly $13 million today) for children's charities, bringing joy-and a touch of magic-to thousands.

Alchemy, Frankenstein, and “evil scientist “ laboratories

Mary Shelly was likely inspired by stories of a German alchemist who conducted disreputable experiments in Frankenstein Castle.

Johann Konrad Dippel was a devout believer in the possibility of this miraculous concoction.

Born in Frankenstein Castle in 1673, he was an occultist, theolo-gian, physician, alchemist, and recluse. People viewed him as a dark sorcerer who shunned society and brewed up diabolical potions in secret lairs.

According to rumor, Dippel also fiddled with electrical therapies on bodies stolen from the local graveyards and attempted soul trans-terence through the use of a funnel. Yes, a funnel.

Built circa 1252, Frankenstein Castle sits on a hill overlooking the area known as Odenwald.

Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf Il' Alchemical Workshop

PRAGUE • CZECH REPUBLIC

Enter a museum in one of the oldest buildings in Prague's Jewish Quarter, locate the statue in the library, and turn it to reveal a secret door and a set of stairs that leads down to a medieval alchemical laboratory.

The museum, called Speculum Alchemiae, purports that Rudoli II, the Holy Roman Emperor from 1576 to 1612,

Simon Winder in Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe, a lion and tiger were allowed to freely wander Prague Castle. The castle's account books list compensation paid to victims of feline attacks.)

Emperor Yangs Perplexing Palace

Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty He would wander the maze of corridors and chambers never knowing which one of his concubines he would meet.