The site of slaughterhouses that once satisfied Parisians' taste for horse meat is now home to a park and book market.

Shop at the 200-year-old store where Julia Child stocked up on copper cookware.

A glamorous hotel that once accommodated French resistance fighters and concentration camp survivors.

A museum dedicated to linguistics, from how babies learn to talk to endangered and extinct languages.

Dedicated to the history and culture of smoking, this small museum now includes a vape lounge.

Stripes of human ashes cover a back lawn in the most sought-after burial grounds in Paris.

The remaining relics of the patroness of Paris lie in a chapel under a striking double spiral staircase.

Ordinary art transforms to extraordinary thanks to locals' quirky sense of humor.

What looks like a normal building is really a hollow facade hiding a subway vent.

Saintly bones pressed into a wax effigy of a Catholic superstar.

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

A mud statue stands in the dark tunnels, seeming to hold up the weight of the city above.

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

The industrial architecture honors the laborers who brought the Exposition Universelle of 1900 to life.

This little-known relic crypt holds stolen parts of a Roman Empress.

135 bronze medallions mark a French meridian line which once rivaled the hotshot Greenwich timeline.

This recessed garden protects thousands of mountain plants by creating its own microclimates.

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

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

BDSM, 1930s Style.

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

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

Where the high court feasted, frolicked, and high courtesans put their royal lovers' diamonds to the test.

This off-limits room in the National Library of France is home to a system of pneumatic tubes, once used to bring books to readers.