Birthplace of Harry Potter, Edinburgh, Scotland
Lucy the Elephant, still there in Margate City, New Jersey
Did you know that Paris might have had an enormous elephant instead of the Arc de Triomphe if Napoleon had not been defeated? He loved the idea and wanted a huge bronze elephant to stand where the Bastille fortress had been torn down. A large plaster elephant was erected in 1814 and stood for more than thirty years-- in Les Misérables, the tattered urchins of Paris, including Gavroche, take refuge inside it.
The house called "la maison de l'éléphant" (because an elephant was carved over the door) was built by the doctor to King Louis XI. I love how you can just walk around Paris in a touristy street, Saint-André-des-Arts, and see that the house was built in 1467. Even better, by now it has good plumbing!
