The secret guide to the mystic sites of Paris

One of the stranger things in the publishing business is the number of non-fiction books with titles like "the mystery of..." or "secret guide to..." The common factor for those books is that they never contain any mysteries or secrets. Quite often the author does not know much about the subject either. Why else would he call it a mystery? I decided to provide you, avid reader, with the same service for free. From all the cities in the world I know, I choose Paris, which I do not know at all. Here are its secrets uncovered.

Paris is a city with plenty of extraordinary tourist sites. I am not going to give away what they are, keen reader, but I will give some hints.

One mystic spot is one of the biggest conglomerates of office buildings in the world. One of the most distinctive and mysterious buildings there, a huge arch, was built in 1982 by a president who prefers to stay anonymous. Still today, so many years later, very few people have learnt by heart the exact number of votes he was elected by.

Somewhere in the city there is a huge art museum with some of the most enigmatic paintings in the world. If you show yourself worthy by sending me enough money, I will reveal the name of it - but never its location. Against an additional fee, I may also mention the names of some of the paintings to look out for, and perhaps, but then I break a holy promise, which parts of the world they originated in. But do not expect too much. Do not pursue the vain quest to learn the artists' names. I will give no details but that one of them comes from the small village Vinci.

You should definitely try to find the well hidden monument to the unknown soldier (capitaine Jean-Pierre Caunnard). It is surrounded by one of the biggest and most secret traffic roundabouts in the world. When no foreigners are watching, the Parisians go there and sit in traffic jams for hours performing their secret rites of mystical hand gestures towards the less skilled drivers.

But most secretly of them all, well hidden in an obscure part of the city is one of the tallest and most enigmatic buildings of the world. If you were to find it, you would have a splendid view of the city. It was built for the top secret world exposition in Paris 1889. Some people have spent years trying to find it. Admittedly, those people have usually looked in the wrong city, and they were not very bright, and there have not been many of them, but they nevertheless spent a lot of time - at least a few hours or so. And those were very secret hours indeed.