When newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst hired Julia Morgan to design his opulent California castle in 1919, she was one of the few women with an architect’s license. The massive Spanish Colonial Revival mansion boasts more than 150 rooms, indoor and outdoor pools, a tennis court, horse stables, and more.

When Julia Morgan was hired for an expansion of this columbarium in the 1920s, she filled the space with winding walkways and terraced indoor gardens. The expanded space features Spanish-Moorish Gothic design flourishes that are reminiscent of Alhambra.

This wave-like building rises from a bed of concrete, its white walls looking like they were frozen mid-ripple. Completed in 2012, it was designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

After being denied entry to an Arizona resort because she was Jewish, Rose Eisendrath bought 44 acres of land and built her own private paradise. The historic “pink house on the hill” is an architectural gem that now serves as a center for water conservation.

In the early 1990s, the remnants of burial ground for enslaved and free Africans and their descendants was discovered in downtown Manhattan. The site has been turned into a national monument, with a granite memorial accompanied by an interpretive center designed by architect Roberta Washington.

Maya Lin was just 21 years old when she won a national design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Since then she has created a number of other memorials, buildings, and sculpture. This granite memorial, unveiled in 1989, honors 41 people who lost their lives during the American civil rights movement.

This massive concrete and glass structure designed by architect Lina Bo Bardi is not your typical art museum. Many of the pieces are mounted on glass easels in a divider-free space, making the main exhibition room feel like a forest of floating artwork.

From up in the air, Rolex Learning Center looks like a giant slice of Emmentaler cheese, placed on the banks of Lake Geneva. The university library was designed by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, in partnership with Ryue Nishizawa. Sejima is known for her clean, modernist designs, which often feature curved surfaces.

In 1886, Sarah Winchester purchased an eight-room farmhouse and began a renovation project that would take 36 years and millions of dollars. The result was this peculiar mansion, which has more than 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, and 2,000 doors—some of which lead to steep drop-offs or inaccessible spaces.

On the slopes of the Cimini Mountains, the village of San Martino al Cimino preserves rare and remarkable examples of Baroque-era architecture and urban planning, conceived in the 16th century by Olimpia Maidalchini Pamphilj, one of the most powerful women of Papal Rome.