The mental institution where Van Gogh created some of his most famous work now allows guests to walk in the artist's footsteps.

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

Historic medieval fortified city in southwest France.

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

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

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

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

The first green space constructed on an elevated viaduct.

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

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

An "inside out" building in the historical center of Paris, featuring Europe’s largest modern art museum.

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

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

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

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

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

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

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

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

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

Paris' linguistic guide to the international language of, yes, love.

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

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

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