Deyrolle

170 year old taxidermy shop, Deyrolle, is more of a museum of curiosities than a store. Set up like the mansion of an eccentric aunt, room after room opens to a collection of exotic animals – zebras, lions, giraffes, extinct birds – geodes, shells and meticulously organized beetles and butterflies in stunning display. The shop has such a cult following that its clients raised funds to restore it after a devastating fire in 2008. Since then, a new generation has discovered it through Woody Allen’s 2011 film Midnight in Paris. (Art house director Wes Anderson is also a fan.) Deyrolle’s unique character, mystic and otherworldly, renders its neighbors – some of the hippest shops in the Left Bank – a bit, ordinary.