Places claresmith Wants to Go

This mural painted by Keith Haring was done without payment as a gift to entertain the children at the Hôpital Necker.

This monumental mural crafted nearly 40 years ago is still in perfect condition.

On the grounds of a former estate in Burgundy stands an elaborate temple that is modeled after the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

This mountaintop mariner’s church is packed with model ships and nautical art while hosting an annual maritime festivity for the townsfolk below.

An art-filled botanical garden and former dyeworks hiding in plain sight.

A centuries-old quest to create artificial life is alive and well in the French town of Limoux.

One of the most notorious leaders of the French Revolution once lived here.

A cocktail lounge decorated like an American dive bar, in honor of the legendary author Ernest Hemingway.

Hilltop garden on the site of an old fortress overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

A subterranean museum where mushrooms still grow in the tunnels of a centuries-old quarry.

A ghostly and forgotten art deco bathhouse by the windy shore of Dunkirk, weathered but still standing.

A neighborhood with Art Deco architecture as eccentric as its history.

This charming, flower-filled, paved cul-de-sac is filled with artists' studio-houses built in the 1920s.

In this Parisian garden's grotesque former life as a zoo it fed exotic animals to the bourgeois and put humans on exhibit.

A once drab public housing estate is transformed into a colorful gallery of trompe l’oeil murals.

Rows of multicolored bathing huts paint the sand dunes with pops of color.

This church looks more like a spaceship than a house of worship.

This building’s ghostly exterior reflects its former lives as a prison, school, and funeral home.

Old vessels have been transformed into artistic canvases in this unusual cemetery.

This mosque was based on Sub-Saharan Islamic architecture and created for the Senegalese Tirailleurs.

A glamorous hotel that once accommodated French resistance fighters and concentration camp survivors.

Montmartre's sole surviving windmill became an iconic landmark for 19th-century painters, artists, and bohemians.

French sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier transformed the site of a 19th-century massacre into a haunting memorial.

This stunningly massive housing complex is a go-to filming location for dystopian sci-fi cinema.