The largest refracting telescope in Europe is housed on the grounds of a former French castle.

The former global standard for the exact mass of one kilogram sits under lock and key outside Paris.

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

Former hunting lodge of a duke who was an avid collector of impressionist works.

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

César Baldaccini's iconic sculpture of a 40-foot thumb stands tall in La Défense.

Travel back in time at a Moroccan-inspired restaurant that was the height of glamor in the 1970s.

This surreal statue brings a famous French novel about a supernatural cad to arresting life.

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

The water-powered carriages are long gone, but for over a century this funicular railway has been the fastest route to the highest point in Paris.

Paris' linguistic guide to the international language of, yes, love.

Down a cobblestone alleyway is a museum dedicated to Romanticism, with a secret garden.

The ruins of a Duke's bucolic dream, where camels once roamed alongside "Dutch" windmills and faux-Italian vineyards.

A poem by Arthur Rimbaud is inscribed on the wall of a street that, while it is only one block long, plays a key role in multiple novels.

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

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

A modern-day Lascaux cave underneath Paris.

This life-size replica of the Statue of Liberty's flame is also a tribute to Princess Diana by default.

This Parisian gem is one of the most incredible ethnographic museums in the world.

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

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

One of Jeff Koons’s largest sculptures and his first commemorative work.

A beautiful Victorian statue shows France's enduring love of the rhinoceros.

This emotive sculpture was originally created for the 1878 World's Fair.