Abdoulaye Wade of the Senegal has almost completed: Colossus

[Martim Silva]

Nothing like like erecting monuments to the inflated egos of african leaders while their people are living in and eating shit.    

Silly 3rd worlders.

I'm with Neil. Versailles was built while the people of Paris were reduced to eating rats.

Basically all of the pre-XXth century great monuments anywhere were built at great suffering from the people. If leaders had no inflated egos, we would not have anything left of note from the past.

I do like the statue, but does it mean that Senegal has only recently discovered Metal Casting? 

[Cecil]

Nothing like like erecting monuments to the inflated egos of african leaders while their people are living in and eating shit.    

Silly 3rd worlders.

I'm with Neil. Versailles was built while the people of Paris were reduced to eating rats.

Basically all of the pre-XXth century great monuments anywhere were built at great suffering from the people. If leaders had no inflated egos, we would not have anything left of note from the past.

I do like the statue, but does it mean that Senegal has only recently discovered Metal Casting? 

Bah oldstyle colossus is bronze working.

[Neil]

Nothing like like erecting monuments to the inflated egos of african leaders while their people are living in and eating shit.    

Silly 3rd worlders.

I'm with Neil. Versailles was built while the people of Paris were reduced to eating rats.

Basically all of the pre-XXth century great monuments anywhere were built at great suffering from the people. If leaders had no inflated egos, we would not have anything left of note from the past.

I do like the statue, but does it mean that Senegal has only recently discovered Metal Casting? 

Bah oldstyle colossus is bronze working.

Will Mali be overrun by phalanxes?

[Grallon]

Sort of like the Montreal Olympics?

G.

[Malthus]

Nothing like like erecting monuments to the inflated egos of african leaders while their people are living in and eating shit.    

Silly 3rd worlders.

Sort of like the Montreal Olympics?

Poutine isn't shit.

Admittedly, it may *look* like shit ... 

[grumbler]

The Big Ben .... came to my mind... 

The bell?  It isn't even visible.

[Sheilbh]

The Big Ben and the Monument to Vittorio Emmanuele II were the other two that came to my mind... 

To be fair the Palace of Westminster was built because the first one burned down.  Admittedly they didn't have to hire Pugin....

Initially they planned to move it into Buckingham Palace but that was rejected as too Royalist, similarly a neo-Classical design was rejected as too Republican.

Thinking of modern 'monuments' there aren't very many that spring to mind.  A few war memorials (the women of war in London - which I think is superb - and the Vietnam memorial spring to mind) aside from that the most impressive and remarkable public monumentry seems to be in Berlin.  The redeveloped Reichstag, complete with dome, the Jewish memorial, the new Chancellery and so on.

[Richard Hakluyt]

It's not as if the money was ever going to be spent on the poor of Senegal. They got the statue and the president's Swiss bank account is slightly poorer than it would have been.

As for monuments in the UK, the secular ones are underwhelming; what I find most impressive are the dozens of cathedrals and thousands of churches that were built when the country had only a few million inhabitants.

[Sheilbh]

As for monuments in the UK, the secular ones are underwhelming; what I find most impressive are the dozens of cathedrals and thousands of churches that were built when the country had only a few million inhabitants.

I'd agree, the Churches and Cathedrals are England's museums really.  They're the repository of a lot of our history.  You see the architectural styles and shapes, the local posing of local potentates and the quiet seriousness of generations of wardens with plaques on the walls.  You're also confronted with the tragedy of our wars, when you stand in a church surrounded by the dead and only tens of houses in the village and there, on a wooden board, is the list of tens and twenties of local Great War dead.  You see their ages and their ranks and you imagine the family connections (often from them to someone on a marble plaque).  They're remarkable buildings with their real and historical communities.

I often go into churches just to see what's there and very often in countryside and city they're impressive and charming.  What I love is how you go into one and find some unexpected turn or feature that ties this small building and the small community buried around it to the more general historical narrative you have.  It's like the general flow of time rushing over this tiny pebble in some little village far away in Shires.

The Cathedrals too are in a class of their own, though for rather different reasons.

Scottish Churches are far less interesting/more depressing.

[Josquius]

Its the way in most European cities really...When I'm travelling my photos always seem to be mainly of churches

[Sheilbh]

Its the way in most European cities really...When I'm travelling my photos always seem to be mainly of churches

It's true.  Each nation's churches have their own character though.  I always remember how disappointed I was when I stepped into one in Rome that looked superb from the outside only to discover it was owned by Romanian Seventh Day Adventists who'd white-washed everything and probably burned the statuary

[Ed Anger]

Its the way in most European cities really...When I'm travelling my photos always seem to be mainly of churches

It's true.  Each nation's churches have their own character though.  I always remember how disappointed I was when I stepped into one in Rome that looked superb from the outside only to discover it was owned by Romanian Seventh Day Adventists who'd white-washed everything and probably burned the statuary

You'd love some of the baptist churches. A couple of box fans, peeling paint on the walls, a restroom that hasn't been cleaned since Jesus walked into the temple. Wood paneling on the basement walls.

[Razgovory]

There's nothing wrong with wood paneling!

[Ed Anger]

There's nothing wrong with wood paneling!

Nope, there isn't.