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France

Paris

Six million dead under the prettiest city on earth.

Everyone comes to Paris for the romance. Come for the bones. There is an ossuary under the streets holding six million people, and the cemeteries up top are the best sculpture gardens in the city.

Paris made an art form out of death. Flayed anatomy, mourning jewellery, the guillotine as a day out. Wear black, wear real shoes, and give the cemeteries more time than you think you need.

Go when Late autumn, when the fog sits in Père Lachaise and it goes dark by four.

Filter this city

Haunt

What to See

Ossuaries, oddity museums, cemeteries and the properly strange.

  1. The Catacombs of Paris

    14th, Denfert-Rochereau ossuarybook ahead

    The main event. A mile of tunnels stacked floor to ceiling with the skulls and femurs of six million Parisians. Book the timed ticket or lose an afternoon to the queue, and bring a layer. It is cold down there.

    Best shot Allowed inside, but no flash and no tripod, so push the ISO and lean on a wall. Gently, those are people.

    • Solo-friendly
    • Touristy

  2. Père Lachaise Cemetery

    20th cemeteryfree

    The most famous graveyard on earth and a good place to get lost. Everyone crowds Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. The real pull is the collapsing family chapels down the empty lanes.

    Best shot At first light on a grey morning, when mist fills the empty avenues between the mausoleums.

    • Quiet
    • Solo-friendly

  3. Musée Fragonard

    Maisons-Alfort anatomynot for the squeamish

    A vet school museum built around Honoré Fragonard’s 18th-century écorchés: real flayed bodies posed mid gallop. This is the deep end. Go if you have the stomach for it.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  4. Deyrolle

    7th, rue du Bac taxidermyshop

    A 190-year-old taxidermy shop where you can stand between a lion and a zebra like it is completely normal. Free to walk around. Go up the stairs.

    • Quiet

  5. Cimetière de Montmartre

    18th cemeteryfree

    Smaller and steeper than Père Lachaise, tucked under a road bridge so you look down onto the graves. Cats live here.

    • Quiet
    • Solo-friendly

  6. Galerie Vivienne

    2nd arcade

    An 1820s covered arcade of mosaic floors, ironwork and glass, a block from the Palais Royal. The good kind of faded grandeur, and a quiet escape from the street.

    Best shot The mosaic floor and glass roof, early and empty before the shops open.

  7. The gargoyles of Notre-Dame

    4th gothic

    The chimeras and grotesques bristling off the tower gallery, glaring down at the city. The original goths, carved in stone and utterly unbothered.

    Best shot The chimeras leering over the city from the tower gallery, best backlit late afternoon.

Rest

Where to Stay

B&Bs, haunted old hotels, Victorian piles. No hostels, ever.

  1. L'Hôtel

    $$$$
    6th, Saint-Germain pilgrimage

    Where Oscar Wilde died, broke, in a room he could not afford. Dark velvet, a spiral staircase that drops through the middle, and a very good bar. A pilgrimage.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  2. Maison Souquet

    $$$$
    9th, Pigalle boudoirspa

    A former belle époque brothel, now a hotel done in scarlet and black lacquer with a candlelit pool in the basement. Ring the bell to get in.

    • Adults only
    • Quiet

  3. Hôtel Particulier Montmartre

    $$$$
    18th hidden

    Five rooms in a hidden mansion at the end of an unmarked lane, wrapped in an overgrown garden. Feels like you are getting away with something.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  4. Hotel Providence

    $$$
    10th moodyvalue

    Small, dim, patterned to death, with a cocktail tap next to the bed. The best moody stay for the money.

    • Solo-friendly

Feast

Where to Eat & Drink

Candlelit cellars, dark bars, rooms with history in the walls.

  1. Lapérouse

    $$$$
    6th, Quai des Grands Augustins historic

    260 years old, all private candlelit rooms. Courtesans used to scratch diamonds on the mirrors to check they were real. The scratches are still there. Come for a drink if not dinner.

    • Quiet
    • Adults only

  2. La Belle Hortense

    $$
    4th, Le Marais winebooks

    A wine bar inside a bookshop. Dark wood, red wine, dead authors on the shelves. The right amount of gloom.

    • Solo-friendly
    • Quiet

  3. Candelaria

    $$$
    3rd, Le Marais speakeasycocktails

    Walk through the taqueria, find the unmarked door at the back, and drop into one of the best hidden bars in the city. Low ceilings, lower light, packed by midnight.

    • Solo-friendly
    • Party scene

  4. Le Comptoir Général

    $$
    10th, Canal Saint-Martin curiobar

    A rambling bar crammed with taxidermy, plants and clutter, billed as a ghetto museum. Cavernous and strange in a good way, a real scene once it fills up.

    • Party scene
    • Touristy
Next destination Prague → Alchemists, golems, and a church decorated with 40,000 people.