The Peeping Tom of Tallinn in Tallinn, Estonia

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.

Read it at Atlas Obscura ↗

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