Haunted Paris

Paris has some of history's most influential characters buried on its soil; the Père-Lachaise cemetery alone shelters hundreds of writers, artists and politicians. But these are the lucky ones. Other famous figures did not always get to their final resting place in one piece. This itinerary uncovers some of the city's more macabre relics... 

For goosebumps and chills, one of the best places to come is Paris's (and the world’s) only vampire museum, which is nestled down a suitably gloomy alleyway near Porte des Lilas on the edge of the city. Run by eccentric, self-proclaimed ‘vampirologist’ Jacques Sirgent (an English teacher and Bram Stoker translator by day), you’ll find all sorts of odd objects and trinkets inside the museum (just one, packed room, with a large, gothic-style garden)...

A walk through Revolutionary Paris View Time Out Paris walk: The path to purgatory in a larger map If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs, get on the blocks for our Revolutionary Walk, a unique promenade through the goriest spots of regicidal fever. You'll need: stout shoes, water and a fervent imagination. Start at Place de la Concorde, Métro Concorde. The key date here is 21 January 1793...

Q: What should you do in Paris if you're after a night of shock and disgust? A: Try paying the bill in a Saint-Germain restaurant. Or, failing that, sign up for a Ghost and Vampires walk with the Mysteries of Paris tour company. Starting outside Notre-Dame and ending up at Les Halles, the walk is a whirlwind introduction to the ghoulish history lurking beneath the stones and behind the locked doors of the Right Bank. By the end of the night, you'll have been acquianted with... 

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, celebrated local beauty Mme Récamier, and the consumptive heroine Alphonsine Plessis, inspiration for Dumas's La Dame aux Camélias and Verdi's La Traviata. Flowers are still left on the grave of pop diva and gay icon Dalida, who used to live on nearby rue d'Orchampt.

This is the official entrance to the 3,000km (1,864-mile) tunnel network that runs under much of the city. With public burial pits overflowing in the era of the Revolutionary Terror, the bones of six million people were transferred to the catacombes.The bones of Marat, Robespierre and their cronies are packed in with wall upon wall of their fellow citizens. A damp, cramped tunnel takes you through a series of galleries before you reach the ossuary, the entrance to which is... 

In 18th-century French medical schools, study aids were produced in one of two ways. They were either sculpted in coloured wax or made from the real things - organs, limbs, tangled vascular systems - dried or preserved in formaldehyde. Veterinary surgeon Honoré Fragonard was a master of the second method, and many of his most striking works are now on display here. Homme à la mandibule is a flayed, grimacing man holding a jawbone in his right hand - an allusion to the story of Samson... 

The Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris's largest cemetery, is probably still best known to foreign visitors as the final resting place of one James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of the Doors. But ask a local what this 48-hectare site in the 20th arrondissement means to them, and they're more likely to mention the Mur des Fédérés or Molière than the Lizard King... 

Formed by commandeering three farms (you can still see the ruins of a windmill by rue Froidevaux), the Montparnasse boneyard has literary clout: Beckett, Baudelaire, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Maupassant, Ionesco and Tristan Tzara all rest here.There are also artists, including Brancusi, Henri Laurens, Frédéric Bartholdi (sculptor of the Statue of Liberty) and Man Ray. The celebrity roll-call continues with Serge Gainsbourg, André Citroën and actress Jean Seberg.