This banal Parisian entranceway is not what it seems.

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

This 18th-century sundial was designed to calculate the date of Easter each year.

An unusual number plate signifies the building's saucy past.

The floorboard scrawling of a tragic madman is on public display outside a Paris hospital, much to the dismay of its opponents.

Statue of death tucked in the University of Medicine courtyard.

A passage grave used in neolithic rituals.

A statue erected in honor of the toadish nickname given to Jersey residents by the French.

This 1,300 year old monastery built atop a single rock was once only accessible depending on the whims of the tide.

A memorial to the nearly 10,000 American soldiers laid to rest on the beaches of Normandy during WWII.

A daring D-Day assault by U.S. Army Rangers is commemorated atop the high cliffs of this strategic point.

An effigy of a trapped paratrooper dangles from a Normandy church to commemorate one remarkable D-Day event.

This enormous "cloth of the conquest" depicts the Norman invasion of England in mind-blowing detail.

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

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

The tomb of history's greatest potato promoter is surrounded by tubers.

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

The final resting place of the "father of special effects."

Indents in the pavement are all that remain from a grisly death machine in Paris.

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

BDSM, 1930s Style.

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

This surreal statue brings a famous French novel about a supernatural cad to arresting life.

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