Places Paiva Wants to Go

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

An overlooked marble is the only surviving in-place 18th century example of the measurement that changed how we define distance.

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

Site of a classic 19th-century physics experiment to prove the earth is rotating.

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

18th century underground pilgrimage site, dedicated to a Saint that did something...

A well-preserved medieval village nested on a rocky outcrop and surrounded by a network of cliffs, natural bridges and canyons.

This stunning natural double arch, the largest in the Alps, went undiscovered until 2005.

The recovered bones of martyrs slaughtered during The Terror are on display in this church crypt.

This massive blockhead sculpture hides an entire library.

A Gothic cathedral created from volcanic rocks.

Remains of Roman amphitheater hidden in a sleepy quarter of Paris.

Do these monsters look familiar? The gargoyles on this church are all from pop culture.

The mental institution where Van Gogh created some of his most famous work now allows guests to walk in the artist's footsteps.

Historic medieval fortified city in southwest France.

The largest underground church in Europe.

Science fiction's grandfather has a fittingly marvelous tomb.

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

This natural French spring has been turned into a magical grotto by Roman and medieval constructions.

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

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

This salt marsh in Southern France is as pink as the flamingos that inhabit it.

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

Pitié-Salpêtrière was the dumping grounds for women who received the dreaded diagnosis of "hysterical."