Search to Discover Top Places in Paris

Long before it reopened as one of Paris’s most talked-about museums, the Hôtel de la Marine stood watch over the newly laid-out Place Louis XV — today’s Place de la Concorde — as the royal Garde-Meuble, the storehouse charged with furnishing every residence of the French crown. Cannon seized from its courtyard in July 1789 fired the opening shots at the Bastille, and the crown jewels vanished from its vaults in a brazen 1792 heist. For over two centuries afterward, the building served as the headquarters of the French Navy, witnessing Napoleon’s coronation ball and Nazi occupation during the Second World War. The Navy moved out in 2015, clearing the way for a six-year, €135-million restoration that returned the 18th-century Intendant’s apartments to their original splendor and installed the Al Thani Collection’s rotating trove of decorative art.

La Madeleine Church in Paris, an iconic neoclassical monument near Place de la Concorde, has a fascinating history spanning over 80 years of construction. Originally planned as a parish church in the 18th century, its purpose shifted through France’s political upheavals—from a revolutionary oratory to Napoleon’s envisioned “Temple to the Glory of the Great Army”—before finally being consecrated as a Catholic church. Blending the grandeur of ancient temples with Parisian elegance, La Madeleine stands today as both a place of worship and one of the city’s most striking historic landmarks.