Saint-Jacques Tower

That soaring tower standing alone in its little park has no church attached to it, and there's a wonderfully ridiculous reason for that.

The Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was built and paid for by the butchers' guild of Paris. Yes, the butchers. The meat merchants of Les Halles were so obscenely wealthy they bankrolled an entire flamboyant Gothic church between 1509 and 1523. "de-la-Boucherie" literally means "of the butchery." Power has always worn interesting costumes.

Then came the Revolution, and the church was demolished. The tower survived, and for a while it had a second career as a bullet factory. Workers would melt lead, pour it through a sieve from the top, and the droplets would harden into perfect little spheres as they fell, landing in a bucket of cold water below. When you look at the attached photo, you can imagine that his was the right place for this.

The alchemist Nicolas Flamel, legendary pursuer of gold, had his shop right next door and was buried beneath the church floor. After demolition, his gravestone was sold to a greengrocer who used it to weigh down spinach. The city eventually had to buy it back. Even in death, Flamel kept slipping through people's fingers.