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Photo: Roger from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A., CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Step into this beautiful and grand Roman Catholic church and you might think you've been teleported to Italy. Be sure to look up. The paintings on the ceiling are breathtaking.
The Basilica of Regina Pacis is a Catholic parish church located in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, under the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. The church was built as a votive shrine, within the then-Parish of St. Rosalia. The original parish church, built in 1905, was considered the "Mother Church of Italian immigrants" of the diocese.
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About 10 blocks, centered around the "Candy Cane House" on 84th and 12th. During the holiday season the locals bring up the most spectacular decorations-- do a Flickr or Google image search yourself and see! There's the house with the giant snowman, the house with the giant nutcrackers, the house with Winnie and Shrek, and the Toyland house with the animatronic reindeer. Go on a Friday or Saturday night, between 7 and 10. It'll put the Christmas spirit in you.
If you like your churches large and impressive, OLPH is not to be missed. This Roman Catholic basilica is bigger and more ornate than Brooklyn's cathedral near downtown.
The Living Torah Museum is a group of Orthodox Jewish museums that opened in 2002 and drew approximately 600,000 visitors in the first twelve years. Originally a separate museum that opened in 2008, an exhibit on animals of the Bible and Talmud, known as the Torah Animal World merged with the main museum in 2014. It is also home to examples of Biblical and Talmudic archaeological artifacts and antique Judaica and Jewish books. From 2005-2016, the museum was home to the world's oldest known example of a stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments until it was sold at auction for $850,000 in November 2016.
This is the park after which the neighborhood is named. It offers breathtaking views of the neighborhood and the Manhattan skyline, even as far as New Jersey. There are basketball courts, an outdoor swimming pool, walking paths, and urban wildlife.
The park is good for a walk, and you can follow the path toward the water which takes you to the pier and a bunch of park stuff along the water towards the Verrazano Bridge. Those are all really refreshing walks.