Michael Jackson visited Paris nine times between 1988 and 2009. Most of those visits were private, conducted with the kind of logistical complexity that comes with being the most famous person in the world. I spent a day retracing every location I could document.

His preferred hotel was the Plaza Athenee on Avenue Montaigne. He booked the Tour Eiffel suite, the largest and most expensive room in the hotel, and used it as an apartment more than a hotel room. Staff members from that era have described him ordering room service at unusual hours, rarely leaving before midnight, and receiving visitors in a living room he had rearranged to his specific preferences.

During his Bad Tour in 1988, he stayed at the Hotel de Crillon on Place de la Concorde. Fans gathered outside in the hundreds every day. MJ would appear at the window holding handmade signs that read “I love you” in different languages. This was not a performance. Multiple witnesses confirm it was completely spontaneous.

The toy store Au Nain Bleu, the oldest toy shop in Paris, was a regular stop. He would arrive with a small entourage and spend hours walking the aisles, picking up stuffed animals, model boats, and miniature trains. Staff who served him said he had the focus of a child who had been given unlimited time in a store he had always wanted to enter.

His most significant Paris experience was a private visit to the Louvre in June 1988, arranged after hours when the museum was closed to the public. He walked through the collections with a small group, and the accounts of that evening form the basis of a separate article worth reading on its own.

Michael Jackson’s Paris is not marked on any tourist map. It is in the windows of hotels, the aisles of toy shops, and the quiet corridors of a museum after hours. Ten years after his death, the city still carries the traces of his visits.