It seems that for as long as humanity has had time and money it has been wantonly wasting it. Money wasting is as human a trait as yawning or the pox. People have been creating expensive, useless buildings and outhouses for no other reason than to show off since rich people were invented in the 16th century. A folly according to the OED is…
…a popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder
In short a folly is a building or structure with no real use other than for decoration; or a building that was ridiculously expensive to build without adding any actual benefits to the area. Follies differ from classical sculptures because they’re buildings rather than art per se. To all intents and purposes a folly looks as though it should be useful but it isn’t. It’s a phsycial manifestation of whimsy.
Follies started out as Gothic outhouses and additions to English gardens, and slowly mutated into buildings inspired by far flung mystical places like China and India.
Here are a few examples of such follies for you to point and laugh at, maybe shed a tear and stare with jaws agape:
Erected in 1778 these faux Roman ruins were initially built for Emperor Maximillian II but had been relegated to a podwer store until they were moved to Schönbrunn Palace.
This exotic Chinese tower, built under King Louis XVI within an exotic Asian garden, is the only remain of the Duke of Choiseul’s chateau, destroyed in 1823. The views of the Loire Valley from the top are particularly enchanting, so I’ve heard.
Majestically pointless and wonderfully ornate, this water feature in Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe is quite breathtaking. Work began on the ornamental “mountain park” in 1696 and took 150 years to complete.
Built in the late 18th century, this is the earliest mosque shaped building in Germany. At the time a “Turkish” kind of style was all the rage. The building was never meant to be used for prayer but over the ages it has been used appropriately. The mosque still counts as a folly because its intention was to wow and impressive without being useful at all.
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Originialy built of cardboard and wood this impressive folly was designed using four different building vibes: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque. It was initially built for a laugh from 1896-1908, but it proved so popular that it was built out of proper building materials from 1904-1908 and is now used as a museum.
Overbury was a British Judge who served in Thalassery in southern India in the 1870’s. Although designed as a private picnic spot it has since been taken over by the local public who enjoy relaxing there, so that’s nice.
In Ireland, so-called ‘famine follies’ sprung up during the potato famine. The high society of the day didn’t like handing out cash without it being earned, so the rich would commission pointless building works to save the lives of the poorest people.
Roads were built in the middle of nowhere that led from nothing to nothing, piers were built on bogs and walls were erected for no good reason. My initial feelings were “why don’t you give the starving people the cash rather than make them work on an empty stomach?” But some proud folk probably weren’t keen on hand-outs either, perhaps some preferred to earn their keep?
Conolly’s Folly is one such famine folly. It was commissioned by Katherine Conolly along with other works on her estate to employ hundreds of poor people when the famine was at its worst in 1740 and 1741.
Otherwise known as the Garden of Monsters, this place looks pretty mad. Built in the 16th century the gardens were designed to shock and by all accounts they did the job pretty well. There’s a wealth of gigantic and grotesque statues of elephants and dragons. Among the statues are nestled the occasional folly:
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Arkadia in Łowicz County, Poland is a fully un-functioning semi-ruined Roman aqueduct set in an “English” garden.
This decorative, German inspired fairytal castle was built in 1912 near Yalta, on the Crimean peninsula. Despite its precarious appearance the Swallow’s Nest survived an earthquake, of magnitude 6 or 7 on the Richter Scale, virtually unscathed.
If this post has made you want to look at more buildings and architecture and stuff, be my guest:
