7 of the weirdest sculpture parks in the world

When most people think of sculptures, classics like Rodin’s The Thinker or Michelangelo’s David come to mind, not gigantic hands or underwater goddesses.

We’ve collected a list of parks across the globe that are home to some of the strangest, most off-the-wall sculptures you can imagine. From Man Throwing Babies to 1001 Nights built from thousands of tons of sand, these works of art will likely leave you scratching your head in wonder.

At Sun Cruise Resort in South Korea, you can enjoy the feel of a cruise while staying safely on land. At the hotel, shaped like a full-size cruise ship perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, you can find a variety of eccentricities– not the least of which is the sculpture garden. Its centerpiece is a gigantic pair of hands called “The Hands of Blessing,” which open to the sea and are a perfect spot to catch the sun rise. Also found in their sculpture garden is a collection of totem poles nestled among flowers and gardens. The resort is reportedly a popular place to propose.

In Mexico, dive into the waters around Cancun, Isla Mujeres and Punta Nizuc to discover an underwater museum of 450 permanent life-size sculptures by Jason deCaires Taylor. Named the Museo Subacuatico de Arte (MUSA), the underwater park provides a reef structure that encourages coral life, while also offering an attraction for snorkelers and divers, drawing them away from other natural reefs that are in recovery. Mexico is not the only home to one of Taylor’s under-the-sea sculpture parks. You can also find them below the sea in Grenada, in a river in Canterbury, England, and the Bahamas.

What can you do with 35,000 tons of sand, 70 sculptors and five soccer fields of space? Create the world’s largest sand sculpture, of course. Opened from January to April 2014, the sands of time recently erased this marvel in Kuwait (all sand sculptures are temporary). Yet, the park was a spectacle to behold. Created by the Sand Sculpture Company and commissioned by the Proud to Be Kuwaiti organization, this sculpture pictured took nine weeks to build and featured a 10,000-ton central palace that was more than five stories high and which ranks as the tallest sand sculpture ever built. Look for more sand sculptures around the world this year at the Fulong Sand Sculpting Art Festival in Taiwan through June, the Fiesa International Sand Sculpture Festival in Portugal May through October, and Storyland at Frankston Waterfront in Australia in December.