Still Getting Visitors (10 Photos)

Ten Memorials Kept in Public View

A ring of displaced gravestones in London, a shrine between Tokyo office towers, a beloved cat still lounging by the sidewalk and a wartime doodle carved into a national monument: these ten places keep people, animals and history in plain view.

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💀 The Kiss of Death — Poblenou Cemetery, Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

A winged skeleton bends over a young man in this marble sculpture on the Llaudet Soler family tomb in Poblenou Cemetery. It was made in 1930 in the workshop of Jaume Barba, and Betevé reports that its author is believed to be Joan Fontbernat, Barba’s son-in-law.

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🐈 Tombili — By Seval Şahin in Istanbul, Turkey 🇹🇷

Tombili became famous for lounging against this curb like a person watching the street. After the cat died in August 2016, sculptor Seval Şahin made a bronze memorial in the same relaxed pose, letting the neighborhood keep its most recognizable resident in place. It was unveiled on World Animal Day, October 4, 2016, on Güleç Çıkmazı in Ziverbey, Kadıköy.

💡 Statue Fact: About a month after the unveiling, the statue was stolen on the night of November 7, 2016. It was back in its place two nights later.

More: The statue of Tombili, the stray cat who sat like this

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⛓️ Nkyinkyim — By Kwame Akoto-Bamfo in Montgomery, Alabama, USA 🇺🇸

A man in a metal collar strains forward, and the chain from his neck runs to the figure behind him. The Equal Justice Initiative identifies Nkyinkyim as the work of Ghanaian artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, standing at the entrance to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

More: Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s memorial sculpture in Montgomery

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🪦 The Hardy Tree — St Pancras Old Church, London, UK 🇬🇧

Old headstones lean together around the base of an ash, photographed before its fall, in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church. Part of the burial ground was cleared for the Midland Railway in the 1860s, and Thomas Hardy’s connection with the work gave the tree its name. Camden Council records the tree’s history and its fall in December 2022; the ring of stones remains.

📷 Photo: David Edgar / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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🐕 Rex’s Grave — Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, USA 🇺🇸

Visitors leave sticks across the paws of Rex, the bronze dog who has watched over this grave in Green-Wood Cemetery for more than a century. He sits on the lot of John E. Stow, a New York fruit merchant who died in 1884, and the cemetery’s 19th-century files mention a “bronze likeness of a dog” there; whether Rex is buried with him is unclear.

More: Rex’s grave and the sticks left by visitors

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🎖️ Legerwood Memorial Trees — Tasmania, Australia 🇦🇺

Legerwood planted trees in 1918 for local soldiers who died in World War I. When a safety report found the trees could not remain, the town kept their stumps and had them carved into memorials instead. The row now tells the soldiers’ stories in wood.

📷 Photo: jacobharrisau / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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🐎 Crazy Horse Memorial — By Korczak Ziolkowski in South Dakota, USA 🇺🇸

The finished face appears high on Thunderhead Mountain while the horse’s head is still outlined on the rock. Work began in 1948 and continues across generations. The memorial’s own timeline traces the project from Henry Standing Bear’s invitation to the current carving.

💡 Funding Fact: The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation is a nonprofit that has not sought federal funding; the carving is paid for by admission fees and donations.

📷 Sculpture: Korczak Ziolkowski. Photo: Ahzoov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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⛩️ Masakado’s Grave — Otemachi, Tokyo, Japan 🇯🇵

This small plot remains in Tokyo’s financial district while office towers rise around it. The shrine is said to hold the head of the 10th-century rebel Taira no Masakado, and people still leave offerings at the stone monument.

💡 History Fact: Temporary Finance Ministry offices once stood on the site. After several officials, including the finance minister, met with accidents or early deaths, the ministry tore the building down and restored the grave mound, the South China Morning Post recounts.

📷 Photo: Kakidai / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

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🍎 Alan Turing Memorial — By Glyn Hughes in Manchester, UK 🇬🇧

Glyn Hughes placed Alan Turing at one end of a public bench in Sackville Gardens, leaving room for visitors to sit beside him. The Imperial War Museums register dates the memorial to June 23, 2001, Turing’s birthday.

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

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✍️ Kilroy Was Here — National World War II Memorial, Washington, DC, USA 🇺🇸

A bald head and long nose peek over a line in this small granite engraving. “Kilroy was here” followed American troops across both theaters of World War II; the National Park Service notes that two Kilroys are tucked into the memorial’s Atlantic and Pacific sides.

📷 Photo: Luis Rubio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)