Muséum national d'histoire naturelle

In the Grande Galerie de l'Évolution, a procession of mounted elephants, giraffes and other African mammals crosses the floor of a soaring 19th-century glass-roofed hall, while a separate room is devoted to endangered and extinct species. The gallery is the centrepiece of France's National Museum of Natural History, signed in French as the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, whose buildings are spread across the Jardin des Plantes on the Left Bank of Paris.

Nearby, the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy packs hundreds of skeletons into a hall that has changed little since it opened in 1898, with fossils, including dinosaurs, on the upper floor. The garden grounds also hold mineralogy and geology galleries, large tropical greenhouses and a small zoo, the Ménagerie.

The museum grew out of a royal garden of medicinal plants founded in the 17th century and took its present form during the French Revolution in 1793. It draws nearly two million visitors a year and suits families and anyone curious about the natural world. Its separate galleries and gardens can easily fill a full day.