Photos Of The Historically Expensive Sochi Olympic Venues

Russia went $39 billion over budget in staging the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

It's the most expensive Olympics ever by far - beating the 2008 Beijing Olympics by nearly $10 billion.

A significant portion of that cost came from the construction of nearly a dozen new venues.

Sochi was a resort town before it won the right to host the games. Two massive groups of venues had to be constructed essentially from scratch, at a high cost.

Some of the venues (the mountain ones especially) are spectacular. Others are a little bland.