A popular shrine where the Blessed Virgin allegedly appeared in 1830, displaying a holy armchair and two incorruptible remains of Lady Saints.

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

A haunting collection of the vanished and disappearing natural world.

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

A unrivaled and rather horrifying collection of wax dermatological models.

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.

Hidden away in a modern library are the remains of one of the 18th century's most celebrated wunderkammers.

Paris' fabled purveyor of exotic taxidermy and natural history curios.

Statue of death tucked in the University of Medicine courtyard.

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

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

Weird wax anatomical models reside here, as do other anatomical specimens.

One of the oldest medical collections in Europe focusing on rare surgical instruments.

This iconic Parisian bookstore doubles as the "Tumbleweed Hotel" for traveling writers.

This modest marker near Notre Dame identifies the very center of Paris.

Walk upon the mementos of the dead in this Parisian courtyard paved with medieval tombstones.

The celebrated eyesore created by starry-eyed sweethearts.

A Parisian exterminator's shop whose storefront displays stuffed rats hanging from traps.

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

This collection of grinning ephemera has grown from basement to Brooklyn.

Records of the dead describe the myriad odd ways people used to die.

One of only two remaining Victorian-era greenhouses in New York.

A mass grave for victims of one of the city’s worst fires.