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

Fully loaded, Tunisian-style sandwiches are on the menu at this unassuming hole-in-the-wall.

A tribute shrine where the Space Invasion street art movement started.

Despite being considered a thoroughly American sport, basketball's oldest surviving playing field is found in the basement of a Paris YMCA.

Grab a life-changing ham sandwich at this former horse butchershop.

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

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

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

The tombstone of an unfortunate explorer who disappeared in the Paris Catacombs.

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

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

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

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.

This massive library holds what was once the largest book collection in the world.

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.

Marvel at the opulent Art Nouveau interior while dining on dirt-cheap French classics.

A font of vintage porn on the silver screen.

The largest medical and anatomical collection in France lies hidden from the public.

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

This recessed garden protects thousands of mountain plants by creating its own microclimates.

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

A museum dedicated to linguistics, from how babies learn to talk to endangered and extinct languages.

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