The most famous statues in the world rarely live in museums. They stand outdoors, on hilltops, on waterfronts and in city squares, and people cross oceans to stand in front of them.
Most were paid for by someone with a message to send: a nation, a church, a city, a private patron. This list follows each one from that first idea to the spot where visitors gather today, including what was broken, moved or rebuilt along the way.
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How These Were Chosen
A statue earns its place here if at least one of these holds: it still stands in the open air and has become the emblem of its city or country, its making can be followed through the record (who paid, who carved, who engineered it), or it has been damaged, moved or rebuilt, and that history is part of what draws visitors today.
12. Edvard Eriksen, The Little Mermaid (1913)
A small bronze girl sits on a rock at the water's edge in Copenhagen. Below the knees, her legs give way to a fish tail. The Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen made her, and she was unveiled on the Langelinie promenade on August 23, 1913.
The idea came from a brewer's son. Carl Jacobsen, whose father had founded the Carlsberg brewery, saw a ballet at the Royal Theatre based on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of 1837.
He commissioned the statue in 1909 and asked the ballerina who danced the role, Ellen Price, to pose for it.
Price lent the statue her face but refused to pose nude. For the body, Eriksen used his own wife, Eline Eriksen, as the model.
She sits low. At 1.25 meters she is barely taller than a child, and visitors on the path can almost touch her.
She has also been attacked again and again. In 1964 her head was sawed off, an attack blamed on artists of the Situationist movement. It was never found, and a new head was made.
In 1984 two young men sawed off her right arm and brought it back two days later. In 1998 she lost her head again. This time it turned up outside a Danish television station and was put back in place.
In 2003, explosives knocked her off her rock, and she was found in the water with holes blasted in her wrist and knee. She has also been covered in paint many times, red in 2017 in protest against whaling in the Faroe Islands.
After each attack she has been repaired and set back on the same rock, facing the same promenade.
At a Glance
Sculptor: Edvard Eriksen
Unveiled: August 23, 1913
Material: Bronze, 1.25 meters tall
Where to see it: Langelinie promenade, Copenhagen, Denmark
About This Statue
Is the Little Mermaid on the rock the original?
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported in 2008 that the bronze in the harbor is a copy, and that the sculptor's heirs keep the original at an undisclosed location.
Has the statue ever left Copenhagen?
Once. In 2010 the Little Mermaid was shipped to Shanghai and spent the six months of the World Expo in the Danish Pavilion, before returning to her rock.
Why are pictures of the statue a legal issue?
The sculpture remains under copyright until the end of 2029, seventy years after Eriksen's death in 1959. His heirs have gone to court over its use, although Denmark's Supreme Court ruled in May 2023 that a newspaper's cartoon and masked photo of her did not infringe that copyright.
11. Paul Landowski and Heitor da Silva Costa, Christ the Redeemer (1922 to 1931)
A figure of Christ stands on the summit of Corcovado, a peak about 700 meters high above Rio de Janeiro, his arms stretched wide over the city. The statue is 30 meters tall, 38 with its pedestal, and the arms span 28 meters.
It was dedicated on October 12, 1931, after nine years of work.