Manneken Pis

This guide to the Manneken Pis in Brussels opens with a freed convict named Antoine Licas smashing the little bronze boy into eleven pieces one September night in 1817, and the harsh public punishment Brussels handed him for it. It traces the statue back to sculptor Jerome Duquesnoy in the early 1600s and the competing legends about who he is meant to be, from a warrior duke to a boy who saved the city from fire. He now owns roughly a thousand outfits tended by a dedicated keeper, rotated for holidays and visiting dignitaries.