Places clpartin 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.

Remains of Roman amphitheater hidden in a sleepy quarter of Paris.

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

Where the high court feasted, frolicked, and high courtesans put their royal lovers' diamonds to the test.

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

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

A modern-day Lascaux cave underneath Paris.

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

Original cabaret handbills, posters, and feline artwork are a purrfect highlight of the Museum of Montmartre.

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

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

The subterranean "lake" below the Paris opera house inspired the Phantom of the Opera's lair.

The water-powered carriages are long gone, but for over a century this funicular railway has been the fastest route to the highest point in Paris.

The curious underground history of keeping Paris clean.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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