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The zoological museum at Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania is a bit tricky to find. You'll need to roam long halls edged with unmarked doors and navigate a spiral staircase or two. But once you reach the heavy doors marked MUZEUL ZOOLOGIC, you're in for an astonishing experience.

Founded in 1859 — the same year that Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species — the zoological museum has retained its Victorian feel. Rows of gorgeous wooden display cases are filled with stuffed deer, pinned butterflies, jars of floating crustaceans, and dissected rodents. A dusty taxidermied snake, its expression one of drunken amusement rather than menace, is curled around a tree. Stuffed birds dangle from the ceiling, their feathers at the mercy of the open air.

Among all of this spooky beauty, the most surprising sight is a small collection of preserved human fetuses floating in alcohol-filled jars. Though modern natural history museums generally avoid displaying human specimens, at Muzeul Zoologic they're just another part of the animal kingdom.

Visit Atlas Obscura for more on the Zoological Museum of Babeş-Bolyai University.

Natural history on display:

• The long-secret Alfred Denny museum features the skull of a "Terror Bird"
• A French-Colonial era collection of taxidermy and wet specimens is secreted away in the National University of Hanoi
• The beautiful Redpath has been serving up Natural History and Ethnography since 1882
  

Visit Atlas Obscura for more on the Zoological Museum of Babeş-Bolyai University.