15 SECRETS Hidden In National Monuments

people long ago built secret and unexpected features inside national monuments like hidden rooms miniature replicas and other easter eggs that are hard to believe actually exist so join me as we take a look at 15 secrets hidden inside national monuments number 15 the eiffel tower gustav eiffel's apartment could this be one of the first examples of a penthouse for a swinging bachelor when the eiffel tower was built in 1897 the reaction was initially lukewarm to absolutely freezing but after a while he was considered one of the most envied men in paris not for his great success you understand but mainly for having created himself a much sought-after piece of real estate gustav's apartment you see was right at the top of his famous tower where he would host a variety of famous guests world leaders great scientists and high fliers of parisian life at the time and no doubt the occasional young lady or two as he wandered around in his hugh hefner jacket scattering rose petals on his waterbed and making sure barry white was playing in the background well either that or tinkling away on his grand piano yeah he actually did have a grand piano on his apartment at the top of the eiffel tower so you can only feel sorry for the piano movers who are unlucky enough to get that job number 14 brooklyn bridge wine cellars did you know that there was once a wine cellar in new york's brooklyn bridge well of course you didn't that's why i'm here it's my job to know these things before the bridge was opened back in 1883 designer john roebling and his son washington not only had to find a way to fund the project but also had to deal with the wine company and liquor company that were right in the middle of their planned route and so a light bulb went off in washington's head and he offered to create two wine cellars in the foundations of the bridge one on either shore and as they turned out to be dark and cool they turned out to be the perfect place to store valuable vintages from around the world there were also a variety of other chambers which were rented out to local businesses although neither of these or the wine cellars are currently in use however the sellers are still there right beneath your feet so if you're looking for some new york office space and can't afford to rent anything in the many skyscrapers on offer then maybe you can consider holding yourself up in the foundations of the brooklyn bridge it's not a bad location for a business you certainly get plenty of foot traffic number 13 niagara falls devil's home niagara falls is one of the world's most impressive natural wonders but it's probably never occurred to you as you stare an awful wonder at the majesty of the six million cubic feet of water passing over the horseshoe falls every minute separating canada from the united states that there might be a cave nearby haunted by the souls of 350 dead british soldiers i mean why would you that's the kind of thing that would really suck the life out of your vacation just to the north of niagara falls on the new york side you'll find devil's hole also known as the cave of evil spirits and it was here in 1763 that a mass murder supposedly took place according to legend 350 of the aforementioned british soldiers were marching their way up river from the falls when they stopped at the cave to get a bite to eat only to find themselves the subject of a surprise attack by the seneca indians who managed to burn most of them alive while the majority of the others died after jumping into the water but although they lost their lives niagara falls gained another tourist site as many visitors to the fall seek out the devil's hole and reportedly a variety of strange experiences after stepping inside in other words if the incredible power and beauty of nature isn't quite your thing then why not head over to the devil's hole and hang out with some angry dead people number 12 statue of liberty the torch room most of us realize that it is possible to climb up into the crown of the statue of liberty either as a result of your own visits to new york or from watching the ghostbusters do it in their 1989 sequel now if you're a fan of that movie then don't get too excited i'm not going to reveal that number 13 on the list is the fact that you can make lady liberty come to life and take a for a walk through the streets of downtown manhattan but what i am going to tell you about is the torch room at one point it simply wasn't a secret that you could climb up to the torch for an even better view from an even higher vantage point but since 1916 it's been strictly off limits this was after an explosion on the neighboring black tom island which not only caused windows all over the city to be shattered in its wake but also resulted in shrapnel being lodged into lady liberty's arm climbing up as far as the torch room became classed as a health and safety risk or whatever the version of health and safety was in those days nowadays you don't have a chance of being grant mittens not even if you're a ghostbuster number 11 the lincoln memorial secret room we all know what the lincoln memorial is right no well do you know what abraham lincoln looked like okay well just imagine him only a lot bigger sat in a chair and made entirely out of marble and then imagine this huge lincoln being housed in a massive building that wouldn't look out of place in the center of rome but is actually in washington dc okay got it good but it's not this towering statue of honest abe we want to draw your attention to right now as majestic as he is it's the 43 000 square foot basement beneath it that's been completely forgotten about for the past 60 years this exists because workers had to dig a hole for the concrete columns which take the weight of massive abe as big chair and even bigger buildings surrounding him therefore this strange subterranean addition came into being you can see where the entrance to this room is but you probably wouldn't be too keen to wander down there for a quick selfie well not if you squeamish about things that writhe and slither when it was rediscovered in 1975 workers found an entire ecosystem of rats and insects down there so let's just be glad that entrance is well and truly closed number 10 florence the secret art corridor if you've ever been to florence in tuscany italy then you'll know it's amazing there's quite simply art everywhere you look from michelangelo's david to the effeatsy gallery to the random statues and paintings which just seem to be hanging around in the street completely unbothered by the elements art art and more art more art than you can shake a stick at and even if you did find a stick to shake at it you'd probably find out it was an early renaissance stick designed by leonardo and commissioned by the medicis anyway hidden amongst the way all this hard is the vasari corridor an elevated enclosed passageway connecting palazzo vecchio with the palazzo piti joining the affitsi gallery on route and running across the river arnold built by the infamous metagee family in the 16th century it was originally intended as a passageway for royals and nobles so they could avoid using the bridge the part of it which runs through the yafitzi contains the museum's famous collection of self-portraits hence it's referred to as the secret art corridor and although it does occasionally open to tourists you really have to know when and how to book a visit number nine mount rushmore hall of records i think it's pretty fair to say that there are no shortage of massive heads in politics but even the most egotistical politician would have trouble competing with these four everybody knows mount rushmore as soon as they see it and it's probably one of the most well-known sites in the united states and i really don't feel the need to go into too much detail about what it is and where it's located suffice it to say it's located in south dakota where four heads are carved into the rock face of the black hills to resemble four dead presidents george washington thomas jefferson theodore roosevelt and abraham lincoln but it's what's behind the heads that interests us an 8 000 square foot vault built in to store some of the nation's most valuable artifacts sadly this never came to pass until 1998 when officials decided to stock it with a copy of the united states constitution the declaration of independence the bill of rights and descriptions of the four presidents which is why it's now known as the hall of records oh and by the way it's hidden behind a half-ton slab of granite so no you can't go in there number eight grand central terminal tennis club grand central terminal in new york city sees more than 20 million visitors each year and it's a pretty good bet that only a small minority of them are carrying a tennis racket now that might seem like a strange thing to say while we're talking about a train station but this train station must be the only one in the world to contain a relatively secret tennis club although grand central has been standing since 1916 the tennis club has been active since the 1960s and although it may have initially been available to ordinary joes like you and me after its renovation in 1984 it became incredibly exclusive and was only available to the super rich or super famous oh and by the way it was renovated by some guy called donald trump whatever happened to that guy these days it's no longer a super secret society like the freemasons of the tennis world and you don't necessarily have to be rich and influential to play there although on the other hand maybe you do because it costs between 150 and 200 an hour to hire a court oh well at least the trains don't cost that much yet number seven flinders street station grand ballroom from grand central we move on to another huge transport hub flinders street station in melbourne australia which has an equally mysterious secret within its ornate interior a large unused room on the top floor of the station which you can't visit so don't even bother to ask during the 1940s this was a grand ballroom which for two decades was at the center of melbourne's ballroom dancing scene so if you wanted to show off your samba work on your waltz or master your merengue then this was most definitely the place to go as popular as this place was however each night of ballroom dancing would finish at a precise time no matter how much people pleaded with the owners to allow them one more dance this might sound harsh of course but it was purely so that every single dancer could catch the last train home after all they didn't have far to go number six washington monument the mini monument the washington monument has been called many things over the years breathtaking historic phallic well let's not concentrate too much on that last one at just over 554 feet and 7 inches tall this creation really does dominate the city of washington dc and that's quite an achievement when you're in a capital full of monuments what many people don't realize however is that there's a baby version of the washington monument or mini monument as it's sometimes known that's completely understandable given that it's buried underground this is actually something called a benchmark which is usually just a metal cap or rod used by surveyors to ensure their maps are accurate this particular benchmark however is a 12 foot tall replica of its big brother buried under a brick chimney and hiding under a manhole cover if you're visiting dc then you'll be able to find the cover quite easily but no one can open it so don't even ask number five the supreme court basketball court the supreme court isn't the same type of court that you dunk and dribble in well maybe the dribbling would be allowed after all some of those supreme court justices are pretty old luckily however if you find yourself working at the very highest level of the american legal system but also find an overwhelming need to shoot a few hoops then you could always head up to the fifth floor and use the supreme court basketball court the amusing thing about this court and its proximity to the other court is that noise clearly travels very easily so much so that there's a sign on the door reminding people not to use it when court is in session even so there have been occasions when clerks have been sent upstairs asking the players to keep it down as they were interrupting what can only be some very important business taking place in the highest court in the land well second highest as we just mentioned the highest court in the land is on floor five number four trafalgar square tiny police station you know the way doctor who's tardis is disguised as an old british police phone box and the way it's much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside well this tiny police station in london's trafalgar square is exactly the same except it's a police station not a police phone box and it's certainly not bigger on the inside in fact if anything is much smaller much much smaller this strange curiosity first came into being because trafalgar square is not only a focal point for tourists but also tends to be the meeting place for protests riots and marches so it's good to have a place just big enough for one single solitary police officer to fit inside just in case thousands of people start suddenly getting aggressive all joking aside it's really just a lookout post built in 1920 for police officers to monitor what's happening outside while remaining safe secure and with a direct line to scotland yard and a flashing light on top if they require assistance after all when there's a multitude of hostile people heading towards you a small flashing light can make all the difference number three empire state building the 103rd floor when king kong climbed new york's empire state building back in the 1930s he probably never realized there was an extra secret floor at the top and even if he had known about it he most likely would have been turned away for not being famous enough godzilla might have got in of course but kong didn't just have that x factor that the paparazzi were always looking for well you're probably wondering what the hell i'm talking about right well the empire state building is officially 102 stories high with observation decks available on the 80th 86th and 102nd floors all incredibly safe with reinforced glass to prevent any worst case scenarios what most people don't realize however just like our b-list celebrity friend king kong is that there's also 103rd floor which is only accessible if you're a vip and as for the reinforced glass or the protective fence surrounding the perimeter of the building well you don't need that kind of protection when you're a vip as you're generally accompanied by hordes of guardian angels wherever you go now instead there's simply a knee-high wall which means that the 103rd floor offers the best vantage point in new york city a great photo opportunity for celebrities and plenty of privacy away from all those annoying normal people number two christ the redeemer hollow interior if you're a christian then you believe that jesus christ was filled with the holy spirit so if you were going to find anything inside of rio's statue of christ the redeemer then that's probably what you'd expect and what you wouldn't expect to find is a whole lot of nothing that's right this massive world famous landmark is completely hollow built between 1922 and 1931 and standing atop a 2300 foot mountain with its massive arms stretched out 92 feet wide this thing is pretty damn big which makes it even more mind-boggling that there's so much empty space inside it well almost empty there is actually a staircase which will take you all the way to the top but no you can't use it so don't even ask the staircase is purely for the use of christ the redeemer's full-time maintenance crew because the engineers realized quite early on that in addition to the statue's striking appearance it's also one big lightning rod which can be struck every few days during stormy periods oh well we all make mistakes that's why pencils have erasers i suppose number one statue of leonardo secret hatch leonardo da vinci was well known for leaving secret messages in his work designed complex puzzles and generally was quite mysterious and that's even if you don't believe everything you read in terribly written novels by dan brown needless to say old leonardo has always been a very big deal in italy which is why there's a 60-foot tall statue of him greeting arrivals at rome's fumicino airport since it was installed there in 1960. what was only recently discovered however during renovations in 2006 was that a secret hatch had been installed by the artist essen pakoff which contained a couple of enigmatic parchments one of them containing the names of a variety of influential politicians who were present for the unveiling and the other written in latin telling the history of the area where the airport stands going back to ancient times and including descriptions of the landscape before humans set foot on it it is assumed that these are the work of paykov of course but as he passed away in 1973 i guess we'll never know either way whoever did it we could be sure of one thing leonardo da vinci would have been proud watch our obscure playlist for more top 15 videos about the more obscure subjects in our world sit back relax and binge watch all of our best and most obscure videos you

Channel: Top Fives

Views: 1,981,258

Keywords: national monuments, 15 SECRETS Hidden Inside National Monuments

Id: tNgbpsZYHTg

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 09 2022