Spires, stained glass and vaulted windows are the things people photograph. The better reason to look up at an old building is the ghouls.
A mischievous face cut into stone does more for a cathedral than any window. Gargoyles and grotesques are how architects have always smuggled a joke into something meant to last 500 years, and a handful of them around the world are genuinely strange.
First, the difference between the two
The words get used as though they mean the same thing. They do not.
Both are ornate stone figures carved into a building. A gargoyle also works as a waterspout, draining rainwater away from the walls. A grotesque is purely decorative, which makes most of the famous ones on this list grotesques rather than gargoyles.
Darth Vader, Washington, D.C.
Washington National Cathedral is the largest cathedral in the United States and the sixth largest in the world. It also has Darth Vader on it.
During construction work in the 1980s, the cathedral ran a design contest for schoolchildren. The Sith Lord placed third, which was enough to earn him a permanent spot on the exterior.
Finding him takes effort. Head for the northwest parking lot, bring binoculars, and look near the top of the northwest tower, just above a large skull.
The House with Chimaeras, Kyiv
Polish Ukrainian architect Vladislav Gorodetsky, sometimes called the Gaudi of Ukraine, built this animal covered house in Kyiv’s historic Lypky neighborhood as his own permanent home. He ran out of money and had to leave it.
The creatures on the outside came from his love of hunting, and the inside was filled with stuffed versions of the same animals. The building sits across the street from the Ukrainian president’s office and has been used for diplomatic ceremonies since 2005.
Also read: Mount Rushmore Was Supposed to Have Torsos, and 11 Other Landmark Secrets
Emoji faces in the Netherlands
In Amersfoort, architect Changiz Tehrani put 22 different WhatsApp emoji faces on a mixed use building called Plein Rond de Eik. The smile, the wink, the heart eyes, the kissy face and the winking face with its tongue out all stare down at the street.
The idea was not as modern as it sounds. Tehrani took it from an Amsterdam building called The House with the Heads, which shows the faces of six Greek gods.
A policeman and a bull
Carlisle Cathedral in England carries a memorial most visitors walk straight past. On the south facing outer wall, among the medieval carvings, is the stone likeness of Police Constable George Russell, in helmet and star badge. Russell died in 1965 in an altercation with a car thief at Oxenholme Station in the Lake District, and he is buried in Carlisle.
Florence has something less solemn. High on the Duomo, facing Via Ricasoli above the Porta della mandorla, is a stone bull’s head. One explanation is that the builders put it there to honor the draft animals that hauled the cathedral’s materials. The other, far better explanation is that a stonemason aimed it directly at the shop of his girlfriend’s husband, since horns in Italian tradition mark a betrayed husband.
The ones nobody can explain
Two of these carvings have no agreed origin at all.
- The Vampire Rabbit of Newcastle has sat behind St. Nicholas Cathedral for over a century, painted black with blood on its teeth and claws. Theories include a symbol of spring, a deterrent for grave robbers, and a plain rabbit whose ears were accidentally fitted backward
- The Alien Gargoyle at Paisley Abbey in Scotland appeared during 1993 renovations, when 13 gargoyles were replaced. One stonemason’s contribution looks remarkably like the Xenomorph from the Alien films, and nobody has confirmed whether that was deliberate
Chubby faces in an Illinois suburb
Park Grove Manor in Oak Park, Illinois, is the odd one out, because it is a home rather than a church. Architect E. E. Roberts worked in styles from Victorian to Tudor to Prairie across the Chicago suburb, and this was his most playful building.
Its gargoyles and grotesques have round, cheerful faces. Above the service entrances are cartoonish sculptures of an architect and a bricklayer, which reads like Roberts in later life gently mocking the seriousness of his own profession.
Based on reporting by Atlas Obscura
By Elise Ramsey | Culture