Travel is not only good for the mind, it’s good for the soul – right? I mean, that’s what a bunch of famous travel quotes tell us:

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~Saint Augustine

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. ~Mark Twain

Which brings me to the odd and beautiful Les Voyageurs set of sculptures – two of which are pictured above. These sculptures were created by Bruno Catalano and are on display throughout Marseilles, France. In a 2013 DailyMail article, Catalano had this to say about the series:

I have travelled a lot and I left Morocco when I was 12 years old. I felt that a part of me was gone and will never come back. From years of being a sailor, I was always leaving different countries and places each time and it’s a process that we all go through. I feel like this occurs several times during life and of course everyone has missing pieces in his or her life that he wont find again. So the meaning can be different for everyone, but to me the sculptures represent a world citizen.

This struck me as directly opposite to how I, and if we are to believe the quotations cited above, many others perceive travel. Rather than feeling like pieces of me are missing after each trip, I am inclined to feel like pieces are added. If Catalano was only referring to a permanent departure, with an understanding that return is impossible, perhaps I could get on board. But that doesn’t seem to be what he is saying.

The Les Voyageurs series of sculptures was listed as one of the 25 Most Creative Sculptures and Statues from Around the World in an article on BoredPanda, which I learned about from this post on TravBuddy.

In the thread, travelers check off which of the 25 they have seen in person, and propose others that should be added to the list.

How many have you seen? And what other sculptures/statues would you add to the list?

And finally, and I realize this is a biased group, but what do you think about being filled/emptied by travel. Or am I missing Catalano’s point entirely?

Read the thread in its entirety: The world’s most creative statues and sculptures