Historic Sites — Paris

The medieval palace of the Capetian kings on Île de la Cité, later a Revolutionary prison that held Marie Antoinette before her execution, its Gothic Hall of Men-at-Arms among Europe's oldest surviving.

A domed neoclassical church-turned-mausoleum on the Left Bank, resting place of Voltaire, Rousseau, Marie Curie and Victor Hugo, where Foucault first proved the Earth's rotation in 1851.

Paris's largest and most famous cemetery, opened in 1804 on a former Jesuit retreat, is the leafy resting place of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf, Molière and Jim Morrison.