Places nicolefrancis Wants to Go

The narrowest street in Paris.

This Parisian gem is one of the most incredible ethnographic museums in the world.

A magical, macabre wax museum, beloved by locals, uses real artifacts to depict an assassination from the French Revolution.

Despite being considered a thoroughly American sport, basketball's oldest surviving playing field is found in the basement of a Paris YMCA.

Two awe-inspiring globes from the reign of the Sun King hang from the ceiling of France's national library.

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

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

A counter-culture bookstore like no other hides in plain sight in the streets of Paris.

A horde of stray cats rule in this secluded Parisian cemetery under a bridge.

Abandoned railway line circling the city of Paris.

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

The macabre collection of Jacques Sirgent, an expert scholar on the undead and all of their trappings.

An abandoned horticulture institute gloomily presides over rows of derelict and vine-wrought greenhouses.

An Escher-inspired library dedicated to the wonders of the human mind, yet closed to the public.

A well-preserved network of cavernous tunnels have spent silent centuries removing Toronto's waste.

A botanically themed auditorium blooms within the world’s last operating double-decker theater.

A book collector's dream, this Toronto bookstore has the world's first "Biblio-Mat," a random book vending machine.

This abandoned amusement park was built on a site with a dark history.

The "mysteries" of this quintessential roadside oddity were almost destroyed by neglect but were saved by fans of kitschy wonder.

The museum calls itself the "National Museum of the Paranormal" and is full of eerie oddities.

This futuristic airport terminal was abandoned for decades before reopening as a hotel—with a vintage plane of its own parked out back.

A dark patch of the ceiling at Grand Central Terminal which was not restored is still stained brown by tobacco.

America's oldest Eastern European synagogue provided the immigrants of crowded Lower East Side tenements a space of sanctuary.

A staggering collection of photographs depicting medical, social, and historical change.