An iconic and eccentric bar for "Manouche" Jazz music keeps expanding its space—and its influence.

A cave dwelling that was started by the Celts, expanded by monks, and finished by knights.

Hundreds of hidden passageways weave through the old quarters of Lyon.

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

An icy lake tucked among jaw-dropping alpine panoramas.

This historic island prison holds one of the dungeons from the Count of Monte Cristo even though it is a work of fiction.

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

Ancient paintings known as the "Sistine Chapel of Cave Art."

A Parisian exterminator's shop whose storefront displays stuffed rats hanging from traps.

Stroll through retro Paris while shopping for old postcards and discarded doll heads.

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

One of the greatest maze designer’s greatest mazes.

Walk through spectacular aisles of hanging meat and wagon wheel–sized cheese at the world's largest wholesale food market.

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

Sacked by Vikings, blessed by William the Conqueror, dealt a fatal blow during the French Revolution—these ruins have seen it all.

A unrivaled and rather horrifying collection of wax dermatological models.

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

This French ghost town from World War II has been left as a memorial to German atrocities during World War II.

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

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

This whimsical castle of grottoes was the labor of love of a French postman, and one of the greatest achievements of outsider architecture.

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

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

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