Worth the Walk (10 Photos)

October 27, 2026

By Vidar

Art beyond the busy streets

A forest path leads to a troll by a Danish lake. A sea serpent stretches across a French beach, and wooden marmots keep watch above Zermatt. These ten photographs follow art into woods, mountains and shorelines, including temporary works that have already disappeared.

More: When Nature Becomes Art (100 Photos)

🗿 “Apennine Colossus” — By Giambologna in Vaglia, Italy 🇮🇹

In the wooded park of Villa Demidoff, north of Florence, a bearded giant crouches on a rocky grotto, his beard made of dripping stone. Giambologna made him around 1580, and he is about 11 meters (36 ft) tall.

💡 Chimney Fact: The giant is hollow, with rooms on three levels. A small room in his head had a fireplace, and its smoke was meant to come out of his nostrils.

More: The Silent Giant of 1580

🌲 “Stifinder Stig” — By Thomas Dambo in Sønder Felding, Denmark 🇩🇰

He holds a patchwork blanket over his head like a kid building a fort, grinning at whoever made it down the trail. Dambo’s 2024 troll crouches among the trees beside Svanholm Lake, built with local volunteers from recycled materials.

💡 Raft Fact: The building materials had to be ferried across Svanholm Lake on a raft.

More: Three Giant Trolls Followed Their Stolen Trees to Iowa

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🐍 “Serpent d’océan” — By Huang Yong Ping in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, France 🇫🇷

A skeleton 130 meters long lies on the beach where the Loire meets the Atlantic, its skull raised and jaws wide open. Huang Yong Ping made it from aluminum for the 2012 Estuaire festival at the tip of the Pointe du Nez-de-Chien.

💡 Tide Fact: The tail sits at the low-tide line and the head at the high-tide line. At low tide you can walk all the way around it; at high tide only the head and the tops of the vertebrae show.

More: Serpent of the Ocean by Huang Yong Ping

🍄 “Mushroom Path” — By Jon Foreman at Druidston Haven, Wales 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Flat beach stones balanced on thin sticks wind across the sand like a trail of mushrooms leading back to the sea. Foreman made it in 2024 at Druidston Haven. It lasts only as long as the stones stay balanced.

More: The Breathtaking Land and Beach Art of Jon Foreman

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❄️ “Little Nis” — By Thomas Dambo in Bernheim Forest, Kentucky, USA 🇺🇸

A wooden boy kneels at the edge of Holly Pond, staring at his own reflection. Dambo built Little Nis in 2019 for Bernheim’s 90th anniversary, along with his sister and mother elsewhere in the forest.

💡 Wood Fact: Dambo’s Forest Giants at Bernheim were built from recycled pallets, fallen trees, bourbon barrel staves and scraps from the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.

More: 10 Giant Trolls Hiding in Forests, Lakes and Ruins

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🏔️ Wooden Marmots — Sunnegga, near Zermatt, Switzerland 🇨🇭

A big marmot and a small one stand on their hind legs, the way real marmots do when they keep lookout, with the Matterhorn behind them. They stand high above Zermatt near Sunnegga. The area’s Marmot Trail runs 3.8 km from Blauherd to Sunnegga, with wooden sculptures along the way.

💡 Trail Fact: The live ones are there too. The trail has five observation posts for spotting Alpine marmots, and you usually hear their shrill warning whistle before you see them.

📷 Photo: Alltheswissthings / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🏠 Houses for the Hidden People — Iceland 🇮🇸

Three red houses, none of them taller than a hiker’s knee, sit dug into a grassy slope with turf on their roofs. In Iceland, little houses like these are built as homes for the huldufólk, the hidden people of folklore who are said to live in rocks and hillsides.

💡 Road Fact: In 2013, protests stopped a new road from Álftanes toward Garðabær, and the road was later moved around an elf rock. Iceland’s Road and Coastal Administration said it did so because it sees hidden people as part of the country’s cultural heritage, not out of belief in elves.

More: Iceland’s Hidden People and Their Tiny Houses

👁️ “Sentient” — By Daniel Popper at the Morton Arboretum, Illinois, USA 🇺🇸

Eyes, noses and lips float around a calm wooden face, as if it were coming apart or coming together. The girl beside it gives the scale: Sentient is 18 feet tall, one of the giants photographed during Popper’s Human+Nature exhibition among the trees at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle. The exhibition closed in February 2023.

More: Daniel Popper Builds Giants You Can Walk Through

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🦋 Blue Butterfly on a Blockhouse — By Näutil in France 🇫🇷

A blue morpho has landed on a tilted concrete blockhouse, with the surf already at its foot and a drip of blue paint running down the concrete. Näutil grew up on a French coast lined with old wartime blockhouses and began painting them at 14.

More: Life and Poetry by Näutil

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🌈 Sand Drawing — By Ian Mutch at Cape Naturaliste, Australia 🇦🇺

A big cartoon figure sits on the sand with a rainbow and a small waving hand beside it, a few steps from the surf at Cape Naturaliste in Western Australia. From the sand it is just a tangle of lines; the whole picture only shows from the air.

💡 Rake Fact: “Just a drone, rake and some manual labour,” is how Mutch describes his beach drawings on his site. The same page says they are gone within a day or two.

More: “Head in the Sand” Beach Art by Ian Mutch

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📷 Photo: Christian Fletcher