The first peace pagoda to be constructed in the Western world sits next to a small English lake.

An off-the-beaten-path boutique stuffed with an eclectic collection of upcycled goods.

A Parisian boutique devoted to la Sape, the elegant Congolese fashion subculture rooted in European colonization.

Original cabaret handbills, posters, and feline artwork are a purrfect highlight of the Museum of Montmartre.

Ordinary art transforms to extraordinary thanks to locals' quirky sense of humor.

A 16th-century fountain marks the site of a lost medieval cemetery once filled with mass graves.

A French artist's vague warning hangs over Belleville.

This bridge was constructed from the rubble of the infamous Bastille.

In this Parisian garden's grotesque former life as a zoo it fed exotic animals to the bourgeois and put humans on exhibit.

The oldest and smallest cemetery in Paris is only open to the public twice a year.

This museum in a Paris apartment gives a unique look at the iconic French singer's life.

This banal Parisian entranceway is not what it seems.

Twelve grave-faced marble angels guard the emperor's tomb at Les Invalides.

Noirish green neon marks the location of one of the oldest private detective agencies in France.

Exquisite wall sculptures carved in secret by an early quarryman in an obscure corner of the Paris Catacombs.

The subterranean "lake" below the Paris opera house inspired the Phantom of the Opera's lair.

A modern-day Lascaux cave underneath Paris.

Remains of Roman amphitheater hidden in a sleepy quarter of Paris.

This charming cobbled backstreet is the most Instagramable street in Paris, much to the residents' annoyance.

This Parisian café sticks almost exclusively to an ethos of reuse.

This former “ante-chamber to the guillotine” has been refurbished to illustrate the brutal history of French justice.

An overlooked marble is the only surviving in-place 18th century example of the measurement that changed how we define distance.

A majestic lion statue guards this Parisian botanical garden, and feeds on an unsettling item.

The history of radiation is on safe display at the foot of a radiation science laboratory.