What looks like a normal building is really a hollow facade hiding a subway vent.

Ordinary art transforms to extraordinary thanks to locals' quirky sense of humor.

An iconic and eccentric bar for "Manouche" Jazz music keeps expanding its space—and its influence.

A museum which takes visitors to the côté obscure of Paris.

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

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

This little-known relic crypt holds stolen parts of a Roman Empress.

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

Got apples?

This banal Parisian entranceway is not what it seems.

Skeletons, medical artifacts, and other obscure and precious treasures all displayed in a wooden pharmacist's cabinet.

This Paris art space celebrates the creativity and ingenuity that springs from abject poverty, especially in Africa.

One of the last umbrella repair shops in Paris upholds the nostalgic art of umbrella making.

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

Hidden away in a modern library are the remains of one of the 18th century's most celebrated wunderkammers.

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.

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

A grotto-like lodge decorated with gilded mosaics, rocks and a noisy waterfall was the setting for the most sumptuous pleasure house of 1900s Europe.

This Parisian fountain is a little bit fantasy and a little bit nightclub.

A subterranean shelter remains intact under a busy Paris railway station.

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

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

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