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

An odd museum dedicated to French fakes.

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

Museum on French naval history, with magnificent figureheads, a historic diving suit, and a boat used by Napoleon.

Once a 19th-century brasserie, this McDonald's exterior celebrates Alsatian design and the "King of Beer."

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

A museum on the history of Paris, including a set of Napoleon's toiletries, Proust's room, and relics of the Revolution.

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

Down a cobblestone alleyway is a museum dedicated to Romanticism, with a secret garden.

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

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

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

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

A counter-culture bookstore like no other hides in plain sight in the streets of Paris.

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

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

France's most famous cemetery, with some of its most curious tombs.

The vast, legendary catacombs hold secrets much stranger than stacked bones.