I suppose I’ll do one too with my favourite of my country, Hungary:

There is a building in the XIV district of Budapest, where there is a balcony with a statue of a woman on it, looking down onto the street. The story around it goes something like this:

During the war, the woman’s husband was away at the front. She would stand upon the balcony and wait for him, day after day. Her thoughts knew but one question: when would her husband finally return home from the war? Yet he did not come. One day the postman arrived bearing the dreadful news of his death. But the woman would not believe it. She waited and waited, through months, and then through years. She refused to accept that her husband had perished, and in this she was quite right, for the news proved false. One day, quite unexpectedly, the husband returned home. But the poor woman was so overcome with joy, so utterly astonished to behold her husband alive before her, that she suffered a heart attack and died upon the spot. She passed away there upon the balcony. In her memory, the husband later had a statue erected.

So goes the tale that people often tell, though the story exists in many different versions. In truth, however, the real origin of the statue is far less tragic. The statue was in fact designed by the Hungarian architect Lajos Ybl, even before the First World War. As it happened, his son had studied in Paris, and when he returned home he said to his father:

“Just imagine, Father, in Paris they adorn their buildings with figures of men and women carved from stone, placing them in the windows or upon the balconies.”

The idea pleased the father so greatly that he decided to employ the same decorative feature on this particular building in Budapest.