What are you defining as a 'tourist hotspot'? I mean, if it's worth going to, then there will be tourists.
Maybe you could go to the St. Denis Cathedral in northern Paris. It's just off of a metro stop (the St. Denis stop, even. ) and has a lot of history and interesting stuff, but isn't one of those things that people think of when they think of 'Paris' like the do for Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower.
Maybe you could do something about the Parisian walls? The old walls that used to surround the city. I'll try to think of a few more things later...
i am going to be there for approximately 26 days, and the professor strictly forbade us from going to places like the louvre museum and the eiffel tower for this particular assignment.
Not saying that we can't visit it during our off time but its not allowed for the presentation we have to do by the end of the program
but yea these recommendations you mentioned would fall under the category of places that he would allow us to do a presentation on i think, he was kinda vague but the guidelines stated that its just not supposed to be as you say "what people think of when we say paris".
ill post a bit of my syllabus later when im at home