The Wilde card

Statues have always been an endless source of fascination for us. Even ones that don't exist, like the fifteen mile high statue of Arthur Dent on the fictitious planet of Brontitall in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Only slightly less improbable is the new statue of James Joyce in the Italian city of Trieste - unless of course you happen to know that the Irish writer actually lived in Trieste for over a decade. In Finnegan's Wake, Joyce calls the Adriatic port Tarry-Easty.

At the top of hidden europe's list of improbable street monuments is one that commemorates a meeting that never took place - an alleged encounter in 1892 between Irish playwright Oscar Wilde and his Estonian namesake: Eduard Wilde.