Paris, City of a Thousand Lights, hosts The Thousand and One Nights

Les Mille et Une Nuits, Paris' Institut du Monde Arabe's new exhibit will feature one of the most fascinating collections of stories passed down for more than a thousand years in the form of “The Thousand and One Nights.” The exhibit will explore the art and history surrounding the tales in tribute to the work's deep cultural history.

All lush whimsy, the fabulous tales of The Thousand and One Nights count among our most universal delights. Flying carpets and secret caves, plush palaces and rosewater sweets, sea monsters and surly genies, the heroine narrator Scheherazade has cast her spell on caliphs and ciphers, grownups and children, over more than a thousand years. And yet the story of how the tales came to be—and be loved, the world over—is nearly as wild and mysterious as the adventures themselves. Just imagine, some of its most famous legends—plucky Aladdin, seafaring Sindbad—are glorified interlopers, recruited to sate Western demand for more stories, more nights.