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

The approximate spot where the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar was put to death.

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

Notorious artist squat renovated into legal studios.

The former home of France's controversial pop maestro is almost completely covered in ever-changing tributes and graffiti.

This emotive sculpture was originally created for the 1878 World's Fair.

A beautiful Victorian statue shows France's enduring love of the rhinoceros.

The video game-themed street art first popped up in the French city.

The oldest continuously operating mint in the world that has been making coins since the 9th-century.

This bridge was constructed from the rubble of the infamous Bastille.

If you look closely at the oldest bridge in Paris, you might notice hundreds of ugly faces leering from its sides.

Dedicated to the art of hunting, with juxtapositions of contemporary art.

The oldest stone house in Paris was built by its most famous alchemist.

Skeletons, medical artifacts, and other obscure and precious treasures all displayed in a wooden pharmacist's cabinet.

The oldest and smallest cemetery in Paris is only open to the public twice a year.

Paris' linguistic guide to the international language of, yes, love.

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

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

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

An iconic and eccentric bar for "Manouche" Jazz music keeps expanding its space—and its influence.

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

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

An old tram depot transformed into a vintage car paradise.

The world's first motorway was used as a racetrack until the late 1990s.