A simple plaque on the facade is the only reminder that the treaty ending the American Revolution was signed inside.

The oldest continuously operating mint in the world that has been making coins since the 9th-century.

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

A museum dedicated to one of Paris’s most famous residents, tucked into a corner of one of the city’s most famous squares.

Where the high court feasted, frolicked, and high courtesans put their royal lovers' diamonds to the test.

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

A lone cannonball remains lodged in the walls of the Hotel de Sens as a sober reminder of a revolution.

An all-American grocery store in Paris sells U.S. "cuisine" like Pop-Tarts and Heinz ketchup to homesick ex-pats.

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

This demon atop the Notre-Dame de Paris looks utterly bored.

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

This 18th-century sundial was designed to calculate the date of Easter each year.

Statue of death tucked in the University of Medicine courtyard.

A glamorous hotel that once accommodated French resistance fighters and concentration camp survivors.

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

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

The headless bodies of more than 1,300 guillotined victims of the Reign of Terror are buried here in mass graves.

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

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

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

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

Ghosts of France's colonial past.

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

The industrial architecture honors the laborers who brought the Exposition Universelle of 1900 to life.