13 World’s Fair Monuments You Can Still Marvel At

Yesterday's monuments to the future, today.

13 Places

From the late 18th century through the 20th, world’s fairs demonstrated modern technology and art to millions of starry-eyed visitors. In cities around the world, elaborate pavilions and grand galleries showed off the latest and greatest in industrial and social progress from different countries, companies, and forward-thinking inventors and impresarios. (Forward-thinking in some respects, that is. Many fairs included “ethnological exhibitions” with indigenous people set up in “habitats” for visitors to view, with an implicit message of Western superiority.)

London’s 1851 Great Exhibition, the brainchild of Prince Albert that was held in the spectacular Crystal Palace, is considered to have been the first true modern world’s fair. The United States held its first world exposition during the 1876 centennial in Philadelphia, and the massive 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, with its emphasis on architecture and the arts, had a major impact on American culture. Other major world’s fairs include Paris’s 1889 exhibition (which featured the brand-new Eiffel Tower as a main attraction), St. Louis’s 1904 fair, New York’s 1939 and 1964 expos, and Montreal’s 1967 international exhibition.

These fairs were meant to be temporary, and most buildings and pavilions were dismantled and discarded after everyone went home. But travelers fascinated by the history of the World’s Fairs can still find remnants of them in places both expected and totally unexpected.

Whether standing proudly in their original location, like the massive Unisphere of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park or the enormous Atomium from Brussels’ 1958 exhibition, or resting in new homes in places as far flung as Wisconsin and Bologna, these relics are reminders of grand displays and the optimistic hopes of nations.