This recessed garden protects thousands of mountain plants by creating its own microclimates.

A gruesome combat between a hunter and a furious momma bear.

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

Beggars were miraculously "cured" of their fake ailments when they returned home to this 17th century Paris slum each night.

Noirish green neon marks the location of one of the oldest private detective agencies in France.

Executions were once held near this beautiful 18th-century fountain.

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

A 400-year-old church covered floor to ceiling in ex-voto offerings from the faithful.

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.

An "inside out" building in the historical center of Paris, featuring Europe’s largest modern art museum.

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

A 16th-century fountain marks the site of a lost medieval cemetery once filled with mass graves.

Notorious artist squat renovated into legal studios.

Shop at the 200-year-old store where Julia Child stocked up on copper cookware.

The spiral staircase hidden inside this giant Parisian column was likely built for Catherine de Medici's astrologer.

Offal and flawless onion soup are on the menu at this restaurant that once catered to the workers of Les Halles.

The tradition of open-air secondhand and antiquarian bookselling in Paris dates back to the Renaissance.

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

A scandalous Art Nouveau collaboration that set Paris all atwitter at the turn of the 20th century.

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

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

For more than a century, revolutionary graffiti has marked the wall of a Parisian church.

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