A tower that was meant to be torn down, a museum that was once a fortress, six million skeletons under the streets and a lipstick-covered grave — the City of Light is stranger than the postcards let on.
The tower that was meant to be temporary
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair and was only supposed to stand for 20 years before being dismantled. It survived because it turned out to be a superb radio antenna — and then a national icon. In summer the iron expands in the heat and the tower can grow up to about 15 cm taller.
Right at the top, Gustave Eiffel built himself a small private apartment where he received famous guests; a recreation is on display today. The whole structure is repainted by hand roughly every seven years, using tonnes of paint.
A museum that was once a fortress
The Louvre began life as a medieval fortress, grew into a royal palace, and is now the most-visited museum in the world. Head to the basement and you can still walk beside the foundations of the original moat and keep.
The glass Pyramid that marks its entrance caused a national uproar when it opened in 1989; today it's as much a symbol of Paris as the art inside. And the Mona Lisa? Smaller than almost everyone expects — about 77 by 53 cm — with a wall and a crowd all to herself.
The city of the dead beneath the City of Light
When Paris's cemeteries overflowed in the 18th century, the bones of some six million people were moved into a network of old quarry tunnels deep beneath the streets. A section of these Catacombs is open to visitors: kilometres of corridors lined, floor to ceiling, with neatly stacked skulls and femurs.
Montmartre, the village on the hill
Crowning the city's highest hill is the gleaming white Sacré-Cœur basilica, built from a stone that secretes calcite when it rains — so it effectively cleans itself and stays pale. The winding lanes below were the haunt of Picasso, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec.
Montmartre even keeps a working vineyard, the Clos Montmartre — the last in Paris — and the portrait painters still set up their easels on the Place du Tertre, just as they have for a century.
Where the legends rest
Père Lachaise is the most-visited cemetery in the world, a hillside garden of tombs where Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Frédéric Chopin, Édith Piaf and Molière all lie. Wilde's monument had to be fitted with a glass barrier after fans covered it in so many lipstick kisses that the stone began to erode.
Small facts, big city
Outside Notre-Dame, a bronze star set into the pavement marks 'Point Zéro' — the spot from which all road distances in France are measured. The cathedral reopened in December 2024, painstakingly restored after the 2019 fire.
Two more for the collection: Paris is famously said to have just a single stop sign in the entire city, and the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France — so it's only fair that several smaller replicas stand around Paris, including one gazing west down the Seine.