Problems using "where" in adjective clauses

[hopelives]

Can someone please tell me why these sentences are incorrect? I know as a native speaker they sound wrong, but can't find the explanation as to why.

His house, where I visited last year, still needs a lot of work.
Paris, where I visited last year, is a wonderful city.

I know that "which" should be used as the relative pronoun instead of "where," but what explanation can I give my students?

I'd greatly appreciate your assistance!

 

[5jj]

Welcome to the forum, hopelives. :hi:

Where has the idea of to/at/in which. It's therefore not appropriate for your examples, though it would work in;

His house, where my daughter was born, burnt down last year.
Paris, where I met my wife, is still my favourite city.

 

[hopelives]

Welcome to the forum, hopelives. :hi:

Where has the idea of to/at/in which. It's therefore not appropriate for your examples, though it would work in;

His house, where my daughter was born, burnt down last year.
Paris, where I met my wife, is still my favourite city.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

A colleague did tell me that "where" can be replaced with "in which" so if we can't use "in which" we can't use where in the sentence, but I am still wondering if there is a simpler explanation without having to introduce the whole "in which" concept.

 

[moonlike]

Hi welcome to the forum.
I do agree with 5jj, and I also agree with your colleague. I just wanted to post it for you but I saw that it's already mentioned by you. Sometimes my students get mixed up about "which/where". I tell them whenever they replace "where" with "in which" and it makes sense so where is correct. Whenever it doesn't make sense, we use "which". Also "which" describes something or somewhere but "where" says what has happened in that place.
Good luck

 

[hopelives]

Thank you so much Moonlike!!!! I think that's perfect- "Where describes what has happened in a place." If I say "where I visited," visited isn't describing what actually happened when I was there!