A museum of carnival attractions where you are invited to ride the rides.

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

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

This mural painted by Keith Haring was done without payment as a gift to entertain the children at the Hôpital Necker.

The vast, legendary catacombs hold secrets much stranger than stacked bones.

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

BDSM, 1930s Style.

This museum in a Paris apartment gives a unique look at the iconic French singer's life.

This Parisian fountain is a little bit fantasy and a little bit nightclub.

A unrivaled and rather horrifying collection of wax dermatological models.

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

This Paris art space celebrates the creativity and ingenuity that springs from abject poverty, especially in Africa.

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

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

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

A grotto-like lodge decorated with gilded mosaics, rocks and a noisy waterfall was the setting for the most sumptuous pleasure house of 1900s Europe.

The former home of France's controversial pop maestro is almost completely covered in ever-changing tributes and graffiti.

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

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

France's national museum of scientific and industrial instruments.

Statue of death tucked in the University of Medicine courtyard.

One of the oldest medical collections in Europe focusing on rare surgical instruments.

A curious collection of locks and keys.

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