People online love exposing secret rooms. Every so often, a new tale goes viral, featuring someone discovering a hidden room with all manner of creepy implications. But usually these stories are just of homeowners or apartment renters finding the mysterious locations and, while vaguely creepy, are not all that unusual anymore. What you may find more unusual is the number of famous locations that also house secret places.
10. The Medici Chapels Have a Secret Room That was Once Home to Michelangelo
If you’re an art lover, head to Florence, Italy and you’ll be absolutely overwhelmed by everything the city has to offer. You may even find yourself drawn to the Medici Chapels at the Basilica of San Lorenzo.
Designed by the great Michelangelo for the famous Medici Family, they would have lived throughout history as great tourist attractions all on their own even before what happened in 1975. That year, the museum director discovered a secret room under a wardrobe. Inside was what is believed to be a secret room occupied by Michelangelo himself.
The walls were adorned with sketches, some of them depicting famous works by the artists and others totally unique. None were signed, so it’s hard to say with 100% certainty they were absolutely his, but they are all in his style and depict actual things the man did. There is still some debate in the art world.
It’s believed Michelangelo may have used the room as a hideout during an uprising against the Medicis. The room is sometimes opened to the public, but it’s small and access can be limited.
9. Lincoln’s Head in Mt. Rushmore Houses a Secret Room
Mount Rushmore is one of the most famous landmarks in America but its more than just a tribute to four long dead presidents. Hidden deep within the head of Abraham Lincoln is a secret records vault.
The original purpose of the room was to alert future generations as to the reason for Mt Rushmore being there and who carved it. And the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, made a good point. Most of us don’t know the man’s name, just as we don’t know who made many other significant relics and artistic works from our past.
Borglum imagined that the Bill of Rights and the Constitution could be held in his records vault. If you ever saw the Nic Cage movie National Treasure 2, some of this may sound familiar, as the plot revolves around this to some degree.
The planned room would have been enormous. However, the government didn’t want Borglum wasting time on hidden rooms when the giant heads weren’t even finished, so he never actually finished it. It wasn’t until 1998 when the government finally decked the room out with some porcelain tablets explaining the room and Borglum’s work.
8. There’s a Secret Apartment in the Eiffel Tower
Of all the famous landmarks in the world, you’d think the most difficult to hide something inside of would be the Eiffel Tower. After all, it appears to be little more than a metal framework that you can actually see through.
Despite the nature of the tower and its rather skeletal structure, there’s still a secret apartment hidden inside the structure. Located just below the spire, Gustave Eiffel designed the 1076 square foot space to be his own apartment. It features an open air balcony, oil paintings and arguably the best view in the city. There was even a piano, which must have been a bit of an ogre to get up the 1,000 feet to the top and a lab filled with cutting edge (for the time) technology..
Eiffel himself was apparently notoriously private and so few people were ever invited to even visit during his lifetime. This despite many of the elite in Paris offering him money just to spend a night there.
These days, you can get access to the apartment and see what it’s like for yourself if you pop in for a visit. But don’t be surprised if it’s not quite as big as you think since a lot of the floor space is taken up with room for the elevator and other technical components.
7. Some New York Public Libraries Have Secret Apartments
There are over 116,000 libraries in America, which makes for a lot of free reading. They’re great places not just to find and enjoy books but to use resources like computers and printers. Most also offer numerous programs that range from adult literacy and ESL to employment and educational courses. And in New York City, some of the libraries even had hidden apartments.
Libraries used to have live-in superintendents. Libraries, like many buildings, were heated by coal and someone needed to be there to keep the furnace running 24/7. In some cases, that meant whole families living behind the stacks in secret with full proper apartments.
The apartments were generally quite large, and they also came with free access to the library after hours. Some had roof access with gardens. No one lives in the apartments any longer, as live-in caretakers are no longer needed. There are also far less of them around thanks to libraries closing or being renovated, but as of 2017 there were still 13 of them in the city.
6. Benjamin Franklin’s House Had a Secret Room Full of Bodies
Benjamin Franklin is known for a lot of things. He was an inventor and gave the world bifocals and lightning rides. He was a politician and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. And he was also a man who lived in a house full of corpses. That last one is a little less well known.
Franklin spent about 20 years living in the same house in London as an ambassador. It was a four-storey townhouse and, as a building of obvious historical significance, people in the modern age sought to preserve it and turn it into a museum. That meant doing some renovations and in 1998, construction workers discovered a windowless room in the basement in which a pit had been dug. And there was a thigh bone sticking out of it.
Authorities excavated the site and found a stunning 1,200 human bones. Estimates were between 10 and 15 different bodies, and several of them were children.
Evidence suggests they came from the same time as Franklin, but he wasn’t up to no good. He had a friend named William Hewson who had been secretly doing work in his capacity as an anatomist at the time. Many of the bones had been sawn or drilled as part of Hewson’s medical research.
Conducting anatomy research was not entirely legal at the time, so there was a reason for Hewson to do it in secret. With Franklin being both a friend and a scientist, the house was a safe place to do his work.
5. Disneyland and Disney World Both Have Hidden Rooms
Disney World and Disneyland both have their fair share of secrets that are kept away from the general public and that includes a variety of secret rooms that can be found throughout the parks. One of the most notable is a secret hotel suite inside Cinderella’s Castle. The room was intended for Walt Disney, but he died before its completion and it remained unused for 40 years until it was renovated in 2006. It’s designed to look like a real castle and comes complete with a 24-hour concierge.There’s even a 30,000 tile mosaic floor with 24-karat gold tiles.
At Disneyland, you can find a hidden basketball court in the Matterhorn ride. Disney employees built it as a place to unwind during break periods. There’s also a secret hotel room there as well called 21 Royal, that was also intended for Walt and his wife, but now can be yours for $15,000 US per night.
4. The National Archaeological Museum in Naples Has a Room Actually Called the “Secret Cabinet”
Back to Italy again, where they love a good secret room. This time it’s in Naples, at the National Archaeological Museum, where they house a vast array of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum that were decidedly lascivious in nature.
The people of those ancient cities were not above a little bit of R-rated artwork. But once more modern excavations took place, the peoples of the Victorian era were a bit too modest for such things. So all the artwork deemed to be too obscene was ordered locked away in the Gabinetto Segreto, or Secret Cabinet.
The secret cabinet was available for viewing by gentlemen who paid a little extra. The exhibit contained various mosaics and sculptures all of a sexual nature, some that would even be considered questionable by modern standards.
3. The Greenbrier Hotel Housed a Congressional Bunker
If you’re not familiar with the Greenbrier Resort, it’s located in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia and has been there in one form or another since 1778. In more recent times, it was also home to a secret bunker meant to house members of Congress in the event of an emergency.
Built during the Eisenhower era, the butler had room for 535 members and covered 112,544 square feet of space. It was built between 1958 and 1961, some 720 feet into the hillside. There was a power plant, three 25,000 gallon water tanks, 18 dorms to hold over 1000 people and a 25-ton blast door.
The bunker was ready for use for 30 years and during that time technology was constantly upgraded to meet the times. Now it’s a tourist spot you can visit if you’re ever in the area.
2. The Brooklyn Bridge Has a Hidden Fallout Shelter
One of the most famous landmarks in all of New York and so well known there was a popular scam where people routinely sold it to tourists, the Brooklyn Bridge was built all the way back in 1869. That doesn’t mean people stopped working on it back then, however, In fact a major and secret renovation was undertaken during the Cold War when a bunker was installed in the bridge that was only rediscovered in 2006.
Loaded with supplies dating back to 1957 and 1962, it contained 352,000 high-calorie crackers along with drums of water, medical supplies, bedding and more. The haul was discovered by NYC Department of Transportation workers doing an inspection. The supplies were all labeled as belonging to the Office of Civil Defense, the Cold War-era version of FEMA.
The bunker was somewhere in the Manhattan anchorage, but the exact location is under wraps. As for who built the shelter, that’s also still a mystery.
1. The Florence Colossus Has Several Hidden Rooms
We’re heading back to Florence for another artistic marvel here in the form of the Appennine Colossus. At 35 feet tall, this incredible Renaissance sculpture of a man overlooking a pond could have been ripped right out of Lord of the Rings for the feelings it evokes. But it’s more than just a stunning and fantastic piece of art. It’s also hiding a secret or two.
There are grottos and passageways hidden within the Colossus, itself a gift for a Duke’s mistress back in the 1500s. One of the rooms even includes a fireplace that, when lit, causes the giant’s nose to smoke. Apparently, there’s also room for an orchestra and, at one point, it had a working hydraulics system that pumped water out of the mouth of the fish that the giant is holding.