Places alysonwmiller Wants to Go

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.

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

A beautiful Victorian statue shows France's enduring love of the rhinoceros.

For more than a century, Parisians have come for affordable dishes in a grand converted train station.

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

This banal Parisian entranceway is not what it seems.

A series of abstract, silly sculptures represent the works of a great modern classical composer.

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

The headless bodies of more than 1,300 guillotined victims of the Reign of Terror are buried here in mass graves.

Two awe-inspiring globes from the reign of the Sun King hang from the ceiling of France's national library.

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

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

In the best of all possible worlds, everyone will get a chance to see this statue in which Voltaire's heart is interred.

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

The ruins of a Duke's bucolic dream, where camels once roamed alongside "Dutch" windmills and faux-Italian vineyards.

Abandoned railway line circling the city of Paris.

A museum of magic with a Sadist past.

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

A surrealist timepiece by the artist of melting clocks.

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

A museum of carnival attractions where you are invited to ride the rides.

Everyone from Alan Ginsberg to The Rolling Stones has stopped by this classic dive bar.

This secluded ruin was once a home for exotic plants.

I fought the law and the precinct caved in.