5 American Replicas of European Landmarks You Can Visit

The world’s only exact-size and detail replica of the Parthenon from Athens, Greece, is located in Nashville, Tennessee. It was constructed out of temporary materials in 1897 for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, celebrating 100 years of statehood, as a nod to Nashville’s nickname, the Athens of the South. After the exposition closed, locals didn’t want to lose the landmark and continued to patch the deteriorating plaster exterior.

In 1920, the city decided to rebuild the Parthenon using reinforced concrete for the roof, expanded walls and load-bearing columns. The project also involved re-creating the original landmark’s interior, as the 1897 building had featured display galleries for various artwork. However, because of multiple financial crises, construction wasn’t completed until 1931.

Today, the Parthenon operates as a museum. “The interior upper level is a reproduction of the interior of the temple, complete with a 42-foot statue of Athena,” Parthenon Director Lauren Bufferd says. “The Parthenon is visited annually by over 300,000 people from all over the world.”

Built as a water tower to service two swimming pools, the Leaning Tower of Niles—a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa—has stood in a park in Niles, Illinois, since 1934. “It no longer operates as a water tower but is a popular photo-op and destination for visitors from all over the world,” says Katie DiMaria Schneider, deputy village manager of Niles.

Surrounded by a pedestrian plaza, the Leaning Tower of Niles is half the size of the original tower in Pisa, Italy. It stands 94 feet tall, 28 feet in diameter and leans 7.4 feet. Unlike the original, it was built with reinforced concrete and is structurally sound.

Robert Ilg, the industrialist and philanthropist who commissioned the Leaning Tower of Niles, dedicated it to the memory of Galileo. The pioneering 16th- and 17th-century Italian scientist is thought to have conducted physics experiments from the Pisa tower, though his use of the tower isn’t supported by historical evidence.

The original Rundetårn, or Round Tower, was built in 1642 in Copenhagen, Denmark, as an observatory. Nearly 350 years later, a one-third-scale replica of the original tower’s size was constructed in Solvang, a California town founded by Danish Americans in 1911.

“The original building that was there before the tower burnt down,” says Max Hanberg, who owns the building with the Rundetårn replica. “My father, who was born and raised in Denmark, was trying to figure out what to do with the property and woke up in the middle of the night and had an epiphany and decided to build the replica tower.”

Solvang, which means “sunny fields” in Danish, is a popular tourist destination because of its timber-framed architecture that resembles villages in Denmark. The city is known as the Danish Capital of America. “One of the things that makes Solvang special is finding the pieces of Denmark throughout our village,” says Susan Lee, a Solvang visitor center ambassador.

Paris, Texas, is one of more than a dozen cities and towns in the U.S. named after the City of Light, and one of several with its own version of the Eiffel Tower. Construction on the Texas city’s Eiffel Tower concluded in 1993. Made mostly of steel, it rises roughly 65 feet above a parking lot next to a civic center and, in 1998, was topped with a 3.5-foot-tall red Stetson cowboy hat.

In addition to being the primary tourist attraction in Paris, Texas, which is located northeast of Dallas, the Eiffel Tower replica has also been the backdrop of proposals, gender reveals and other celebrations. It is lit up at night in blue, white and red—the flag colors of Texas, France and the United States—except around Christmas when the lights are red and green.

Located in Centreville, Virginia, Foamhenge is exactly what it sounds like: a replica of Stonehenge made of styrofoam. Like the original, Foamhenge aligns with the sun on the solstices.

Artist and attraction builder Mark Cline constructed Foamhenge as an April Fools’ Day display on a property in Natural Bridge, Virginia. “With chainsaws and hand saws, it was sculpted out of blocks of donated foam 4-by-4-by-16-feet tall,” he says. “It took approximately six weeks and four men to shape the blocks to resemble the pillars at Stonehenge.”

First erected on March 31, 2004, the sculpture was unveiled the next day. Foamhenge remained a popular attraction there until 2016, when Natural Bridge became a state park and state officials decided it needed to be removed. Cline disassembled it and began looking for a new home for the attraction. “After many other considerations,” he says, “it was decided it would be best cared for and appreciated at Cox Farm[s]”, where it reopened in 2017.

“One can get much closer to Foamhenge than to the real Stonehenge, letting you realize how gigantic the stones really are,” Cline says.