Places piccolo8va Wants to Go

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

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

Exquisite wall sculptures carved in secret by an early quarryman in an obscure corner of the Paris Catacombs.

The subterranean "lake" below the Paris opera house inspired the Phantom of the Opera's lair.

A 14th century bridge built as a fortress, where the devil lurks on one of its towers.

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

Ancient paintings known as the "Sistine Chapel of Cave Art."

Sacked by Vikings, blessed by William the Conqueror, dealt a fatal blow during the French Revolution—these ruins have seen it all.

A subterranean shelter remains intact under a busy Paris railway station.

One of the greatest maze designer’s greatest mazes.

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

The largest medical and anatomical collection in France lies hidden from the public.

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

France's national museum of scientific and industrial instruments.

This charming cobbled backstreet is the most Instagramable street in Paris, much to the residents' annoyance.

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

This whimsical castle of grottoes was the labor of love of a French postman, and one of the greatest achievements of outsider architecture.

High atop the Eiffel Tower is a small apartment built exclusively to entertain the science elite and make the rest of Paris jealous.

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

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

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

An iconic photograph from the Spanish Civil War saved this shrapnel-scarred historic house from destruction.

Continental Europe's only museum devoted to salt and pepper shakers features more than 20,000 designs.

Barça football fans might see the insignia hidden in a church window as a divine sign.