Breast Spritz

Only the Italians could come up with a public fountain as unabashed as this...

In Bologna, in the Piazza del Nettuno (the Plaza of Neptune) the 1563 bronze Fontana di Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) is topped by a huge statue of the bearded god of the sea, nude and built like a Mr. Universe (which, let's face it, he was) and holding an epic trident. His privates are pretty epic, too.

But that isn't the fun part of the fountain. And neither are the pudgy cherubs holding spouting fish in their laps.

It's the ladies, four of them, one at each corner of the fountain, squeezing their epic mammaries, from which spout multiple spurts of water. Mamma mia! Go, Nymphs.

Story is that the Vatican was not amused. The powers that be considered the fountain "a profane, pagan symbol," as one guidebook has it. But that just delighted the Bolognesi, who always had a somewhat tendentious relationship with the papacy.

Tags: photography