For hundreds of years, automatons moving to metallic music have been marking the passage of time.

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

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

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

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

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

This life-size replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame is also a tribute to Princess Diana by default.

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

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

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

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

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

The first green space constructed on an elevated viaduct.

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

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

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

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

France's national museum of scientific and industrial instruments.

A scandalous Art Nouveau collaboration that set Paris all atwitter at the turn of the century.

A mechanized clock where a man fights off a dragon, crab, and rooster.

High atop the Eiffel Tower is a small apartment built exclusively to entertain the science elite and make the rest of Paris jealous.

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

The oldest stone house in Paris was built by its most famous alchemist.

Abandoned railway line circling the city of Paris.