Top 10 Sculptures People Like to Touch
Statue rubbing is the act of touching a part of a public statue. Popular among tourists, it is a form of superstition that is believed to bring good luck, ensure a return to the city, improve love life or make a wish come true.
This is a bronze sculpture made by Daniel Chester French in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, honoring clergyman John Harvard. The statue's left foot is subjected to almost incessant rubbing by tourists who believe that the act brings good luck. The standard pose for photos is to place your hand on John Harvard's shoe, which has become shiny from being rubbed so much.
The Charging Bull, sometimes referred to as the Bull of Wall Street or the Bowling Green Bull, is a bronze sculpture that stands on Broadway just north of Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. Charging Bull was intended to inspire each person who came into contact with it to carry on fighting through the hard times after the 1987 stock market crash.
Tourists love to rub the bull statue's bronze balls, believing it brings good luck. No wonder its balls are the shiniest part of the statue.
Victor Noir was a French journalist. After he was shot and killed by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, a cousin of the French Emperor Napoleon III, Noir became a symbol of opposition to the imperial regime. The murder of a journalist by a member of the emperor's family infuriated the public, which was already dissatisfied with the political situation in the country, and led to many violent demonstrations on the streets of France.
However, it wasn't his death or the political consequences of the shooting that made Victor Noir famous. It was his grave. Twenty years after Noir's death, in 1891, following the establishment of the Third French Republic, the body of Victor Noir was moved from his hometown to Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris to honor his name and memory. A renowned French sculptor, Jules Dalou, was given the job of creating the sculpture in bronze for Noir's grave.
A life-sized bronze statue was sculpted by Jules Dalou to mark his grave, portrayed in a realistic style as though he had just fallen to the floor. For reasons unknown, he decided to give the sculpture a noticeable bulge under the belt.
It is believed that if a woman kisses the statue of Victor Noir on the lips, rubs the bulge in his trousers, and drops a flower in his hat, it will bring her enhanced fertility and a blissful sex life. More specifically, if you want to find a beautiful lover, you should kiss Noir's lips. If you want to get pregnant, you should touch his right foot, and if you want to have twins, you should touch his left foot.
Victor Noir's lips, groin, and shoes are shiny, while the rest of his body has the usual greenish tone of oxidized bronze. That is why, in 2004, a fence was placed around the statue of Noir with a warning sign: "Any damage caused by graffiti or indecent rubbing will be prosecuted." But this agitated so many women that the fence was soon torn down.
This bronze statue represents Juliet, the heroine from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It was a gift from the city of Verona in 1974. It is believed that touching her right breast brings good luck. People sure do like to touch this voluptuous breast, as it is noticeably bronze-colored unlike the rest of the statue which is still oxidized.
The statue was erected in 1937 with the aim of recalling the cult of Hungarian hussars. Andras Hadik is represented sitting proudly on his horse in his captain's uniform. Now, you may wonder which part of the statue is the one people like to touch the most? Well, it is believed that touching and stroking the testicles of the horse brings everyone good luck.
Feels weird that people go for the horse's privates and not its hooves or that guy's feet.
In Ireland's capital city of Dublin is the statue of a woman named Molly Malone. The part of the statue people love to touch the most is, unsurprisingly, her breasts, as they are the statue's most noticeable feature. From the research I've done, there doesn't seem to be any luck involved with touching the statue. People seem to just like touching her voluptuous breasts.
This statue of the famous singer Dolly Parton is located in front of the Sevier County Courthouse in Tennessee. It represents her sitting on a rock and playing her guitar. Tourists who stop by the statue like to touch the statue's left breast, believing it brings good luck in love and relationships.
The Crazy Girls statue, created by Michael Conine in 1997, is a row of girls standing arm in arm with their backs facing the crowd. It was installed at the Riviera in Las Vegas. The Crazy Girls is an iconic show on the Las Vegas Strip that ran at the Riviera Casino from 1988 to 2015 and at Planet Hollywood from 2015 until it closed for the pandemic.
People going to the casino love to touch the Crazy Girls' bronze butts.
These large statues are obviously an ugly representation of the Bible's Adam and Eve. They are located on the ground floor of the shops at Columbus Circle in New York. Both statues have become an attraction for tourists, but the one that gets the most attention is the Adam statue. People just love to touch his private parts, which have turned to a gold color after so much rubbing.
There is no good luck involved, apparently. People just like to touch his golden dong because it's there.
A bronze statue of Yu the Great and his wife holding hands with a nine-tailed fox between them, which according to legends has brought the two lovers together. The wife's left breast is exposed, and tourists love to touch it when they pass by the statue.
The Newcomers
Also known as the Rundle Mall pigs. The one that is currently standing on all fours is often sat on.
Porcellino is the nickname given to this bronze fountain of a boar. Visitors put a coin into the boar's jaws, intending to let it fall through the underlying grating for good luck, and they rub the boar's snout for good luck, which has kept the snout polished unlike the rest of the bronze statue.
