The Peeping Tom of Tallinn in Tallinn, Estonia

This figure was carved in the likeness of a voyeur, so that every time he spied across the street, he would find only himself staring back. Hidden in plain sight near the top of an Art Nouveau house in Tallinn's Old Town, a bespectacled stone figure watches from the facade. His gaze is fixed across the street, toward the building opposite.

Local legend has it that the figure was created as revenge. An old man across the street had a habit of training his opera glasses on a young merchant's wife, especially when she was undressing for bed. Her husband eventually caught on.

Rather than confront the man directly, he supposedly had a sculptor carve the voyeur's likeness in stone, spectacles included, and mounted it on the couple's house, facing the old man's window. The next time he looked over, he would find himself staring back. A more sober theory holds that the figure is simply one of the facade's many carved reliefs, part of an Art Nouveau taste for playful, expressive faces, a purely decorative detail that later collected a story to match its leering expression.

Get more unusual and extraordinary places each week with the Atlas Obscura Places newsletter. Your newsletter subscriptions with us are subject to Atlas Obscura's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Pikk Street, just steps from Tallinn's Town Hall Square, is one of Old Town's busiest, but almost everyone walks it looking straight ahead.

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