Legend has it that when St Denis was beheaded, he picked up his noggin and walked with it to Vicus Catulliacus (now St-Denis) to be buried. The first church, parts of which can...

Notre-Dame was commissioned in 1160 by Bishop Maurice de Sully, who wanted to rival the smart new abbey that had just gone up in St-Denis. It replaced the earlier St-Etienne...

In 1830, saintly Catherine Labouré was said to have been visited by the Virgin, who gave her a medal that performed miracles. This kitsch chapel - murals, mosaics, statues and...

The chapel was commissioned by Louis XVIII in memory of his executed predecessors, his brother Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. Their remains, along with those of 3,000 victims...

This austerely beautiful chapel, designed by Libéral Bruand and completed in 1677, features an octagonal dome in the centre and eight naves in which the sick were separated...

Truffaut, Nijinsky, Berlioz, Degas, Offenbach and German poet Heine are all buried here. So, too, are La Goulue, the first great cancan star and model for Toulouse-Lautrec,...

Since 1874, this has been one of the most desirable Paris locations in which to be laid to rest. Here you'll find composers Debussy and Fauré, painters Manet and his...

Redolent with revolutionary associations, French and American, this cemetery in a working convent is the resting place for the thousands of victims of the Revolution's...

Squeezed inside the Périphérique are the graves of poet Paul Verlaine, Surrealist André Breton, and Léon Bakst, costume designer of the Ballets Russes.

This huge cemetery was formed by commandeering three farms (you can still see the ruins of a windmill by rue Froidevaux) in 1824. As with much of the Left Bank, the...

Père-Lachaise is the celebrity cemetery - it has almost anyone French, talented and dead that you care to mention. Not even French, for that matter. Creed and nationality have...

Founded as a monastery in the 17th century when still outside the city walls, this barracks, spinning factory and hospice was a military hospital from 1860 to 1968. Left empty,...

The building of a church on this site began in 1764, and in 1806 Napoleon sent instructions from Poland for Barthélémy Vignon to design a 'Temple of Glory' dedicated to his...

Noted for its tiered bell tower, this neo-Renaissance church was constructed between 1861 and 1867.