Places DarkSideoftheFork Wants to Go

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

A 14th century bridge built as a fortress, where the devil lurks on one of its towers.

A cave dwelling that was started by the Celts, expanded by monks, and finished by knights.

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

Hundreds of hidden passageways weave through the old quarters of Lyon.

Science fiction's grandfather has a fittingly marvelous tomb.

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

Ancient paintings known as the "Sistine Chapel of Cave Art."

The first green space constructed on an elevated viaduct.

Sacked by Vikings, blessed by William the Conqueror, dealt a fatal blow during the French Revolution—these ruins have seen it all.

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

A majestic lion statue guards this Parisian botanical garden, and feeds on an unsettling item.

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

This Parisian café sticks almost exclusively to an ethos of reuse.

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

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

Statue of death tucked in the University of Medicine courtyard.

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

Medieval museum built over Roman baths that features famous tapestries of a lady and a unicorn.

Egyptian Revival movie palace abandoned for decades and restored in 2013.

A museum of magic with a Sadist past.

Behind the pink curtain, Au Bonheur du Jour, an art gallery of erotic archives.

A Parisian cemetery where the elite and artistic are interred beneath an eccentric collection of tombs.

This museum houses an imposing skeleton army comprised of creatures great and small.