Paris

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Musée des Arts et Métiers

60 rue Réaumur, 3rd

After the monks of this 11th-century priory lost their heads in the 1789 Revolution, Abbé Henri Grégoire kept his by thinking up a brilliant new use for the building – as a repository of technological marvels that could act as a 3D encyclopedia for investors and industrialists in the new republic. Three floors of the neighbouring building contains glass cases of beautifully crafted scientific instruments, from astrolabes to steam engines. The best bit is the magnificently restored church, the earliest example of Parisian Gothic, with exhibits – cars, flying machines – on glass floors.

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