Swarovski Fountain, Austria
A gentle green giant with crystals for eyes and a fountain for a mouth faces out from a hillside in the market town of Wattens, Austria. Beneath the curtain of water is Crystal Worlds, a slightly surreal and sparkling series of art installations created by artist André Heller in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Swarovski crystal. (Courtesy of Riccardo Spila/Grand Tour/Corbis)
Charybdis, England
Greek mythology supplies the name for this mesmerizing, if dainty, fountain on the grounds of Seaham Hall in Sunderland. Charybdis was a water nymph that was punished by Zeus and turned into a whirlpool that swallowed up ships. The fountain was completed in 2000 by William Pye, who invented the fountain’s swirling vortex design by using high-pressure water pumped within an acrylic cylinder. (William Pye)
Stravinsky Fountain, France
Paris’s modern fountain, built in 1983 as part of a citywide project, features sixteen whimsical, moving sculptures meant to represent the compositions of Igor Stravinsky. Two artists contributed sculptures, some in black (by Jean Tinguely) and others flamboyantly colored (by Niki de Saint-Phalle). (Thomas Gasienica)
Tivoli Villa d’Este, Italy
The gardens of this 16th-century Renaissance villa in Tivoli overflow with hundreds of fountains. The Fountain of Neptune has jets shooting more than 45ft, and the Fountain of the Dragon has elaborately carved sculptures. (Courtesy of Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis)
The Grand Cascade, Russia
Created for Peter the Great in the 1720s, the grounds of the Peterhof Palace in St Petersburg feature a series of 64 opulent fountains and more than 200 sculptures, known in fitting hyperbole as the Grand Cascade. The centrepiece is a gilded Samson wrestling a lion that shoots a jet of water more than 65ft high from its open mouth. Amazingly, all the fountains operate without pumps. (Jeff Huffman)