A Parisian cemetery where the elite and artistic are interred beneath an eccentric collection of tombs.

135 bronze medallions mark a French meridian line which once rivaled the hotshot Greenwich timeline.

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.

The Sun King's military models, saved from the Louvre.

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

Egyptian Revival movie palace abandoned for decades and restored in 2013.

Pitié-Salpêtrière was the dumping grounds for women who received the dreaded diagnosis of "hysterical."

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

A popular shrine where the Blessed Virgin allegedly appeared in 1830, displaying a holy armchair and two incorruptible remains of Lady Saints.

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

Natural history museum celebrating biodiversity with a parade of taxidermy animals.

A unrivaled and rather horrifying collection of wax dermatological models.

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

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

Hidden away in a modern library are the remains of one of the 18th century's most celebrated wunderkammers.

The first green space constructed on an elevated viaduct.

Known as the "Dodo Manège," this carousel features a herd of animals that have disappeared—or may be gone soon.

This Paris art space celebrates the creativity and ingenuity that springs from abject poverty, especially in Africa.

Paris' fabled purveyor of exotic taxidermy and natural history curios.

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

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

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

The remaining relics of the patroness of Paris lie in a chapel under a striking double spiral staircase.

19th century pendulum and a clock restored by a rogue group of guerilla artists.