You can go to a place, but not the time: people live their lives, buildings get built and torn down, and even rivers change their course. Until time travel gets invented, we're limited to visiting places that exist here and now, and while modern architecture is a wonder on its own, it's a little saddening that great marvels of the past will forever remain inaccessible.

Luckily, we can still appreciate these architectural wonders that were lost to time thanks to paintings and photographs that people who lived decades and centuries ago left us. Inspiring, captivating, and somewhat haunting, beautiful architecture of the past reminds us to cherish what we have today, for these buildings and monuments won't be here forever, either.