Claude Monet was baptized in this lavishly ornate Paris church.

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

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

The world's largest reflecting pool is just two centimeters deep.

The artist and his brother are buried in a landscape straight out of a van Gogh painting.

The spiral staircase hidden inside this giant Parisian column was likely built for Catherine de Medici's astrologer.

The tradition of open-air secondhand and antiquarian bookselling in Paris dates back to the Renaissance.

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

This salt marsh in Southern France is as pink as the flamingos that inhabit it.

This life-size replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame is also a tribute to Princess Diana by default.

The water-powered carriages are long gone, but for over a century this funicular railway has been the fastest route to the highest point in Paris.

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

The ruins of a Duke's bucolic dream, where camels once roamed alongside "Dutch" windmills and faux-Italian vineyards.

This statue was given to France by the United States to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution.

This museum houses an imposing skeleton army comprised of creatures great and small.

This 1,300 year old monastery built atop a single rock was once only accessible depending on the whims of the tide.

This North African stone complex is considered to be the oldest astronomical observatory on Earth.

This eatery is emblematic of the connection between Jamaica and Nubia.

Known as the Sistine Chapel of Egypt, this tomb houses some of the most well-preserved paintings in Egypt.

These Egyptian statues have survived for 3,400 years and were an acoustic wonder of the ancient world.

The city-sized home palace of one of ancient Egypt's most powerful rulers gives us a rare look into the lives of the epoch's rulers.

A Bronze age settlement on the Greek island of Santorini might have been the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis.

Giant marble phalluses on the sacred island of antiquity.

This architecturally eclectic early-20th century mosque was built as a place of worship for the Islamic followers of a Jewish messiah.