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

An off-the-beaten-path boutique stuffed with an eclectic collection of upcycled goods.

Original cabaret handbills, posters, and feline artwork are a purrfect highlight of the Museum of Montmartre.

With a history of slaughter, feast, and famine, remnants of the pork industry decorate this area--even its church.

The historic Masonic Lodge in which the first-ever female Mason was initiated.

A 400-year-old church covered floor to ceiling in ex-voto offerings from the faithful.

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

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

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

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

In this Parisian garden's grotesque former life as a zoo it fed exotic animals to the bourgeois and put humans on exhibit.

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

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

A museum which takes visitors to the côté obscure of Paris.

This innocuous-seeming building is actually the remnant of a major wartime brothel.

Architect Le Corbusier built his friend a cubist house to match his impressive collection of cubist art.

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.

One of the oldest masonic museums in Paris.

Twelve grave-faced marble angels guard the emperor's tomb at Les Invalides.

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

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

The floorboard scrawling of a tragic madman is on public display outside a Paris hospital, much to the dismay of its opponents.

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