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.

One of the last umbrella repair shops in Paris upholds the nostalgic art of umbrella making.

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

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

A museum on the history of Paris, including a set of Napoleon's toiletries, Proust's room, and relics of the Revolution.

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

Down a cobblestone alleyway is a museum dedicated to Romanticism, with a secret garden.

Walk upon the mementos of the dead in this Parisian courtyard paved with medieval tombstones.

France's national museum of scientific and industrial instruments.

A surrealist timepiece by the artist of melting clocks.

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

A favorite Paris bar for U.S. expats, including Gershwin, Hemingway, and James Bond.

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

A counter-culture bookstore like no other hides in plain sight in the streets of Paris.

High atop the Eiffel Tower is a small apartment built exclusively to entertain the science elite and make the rest of Paris jealous.

The very center of Paris is surrounded by a bevy of strange good luck rituals.

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

One of the oldest medical collections in Europe focusing on rare surgical instruments.

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

A horde of stray cats rule in this secluded Parisian cemetery under a bridge.

This off-limits room in the National Library of France is home to a system of pneumatic tubes, once used to bring books to readers.

In the best of all possible worlds, everyone will get a chance to see this statue in which Voltaire's heart is interred.

A grotto-like lodge decorated with gilded mosaics, rocks and a noisy waterfall was the setting for the most sumptuous pleasure house of 1900s Europe.

Behind the pink curtain, Au Bonheur du Jour, an art gallery of erotic archives.