A Step ApArt

I have never met a flight of stairs I’ve particularly wanted to climb up (let alone run up, like those fitness heads who “do stairs” in pursuit of a perfect body) but perhaps if I were to stumble across a few of these, I’d feel compelled to embrace the idea!

These examples of steps as public art space are the perfect marriage of creativity and dramatic effect, merging civic beautification with practicality to ensure truly interactive art exists within a community. Or, you know, they just make a shitty area look pretty. Whatever. 

Staircases carry a lot of symbolism throughout culture, providing a visual for the rhetoric – ‘rising up’, ‘moving forward’, ‘moving on’, ‘bridging the gap’, ‘getting ahead’ etc, so I guess it’s no surprise to see many of these are from places of conflict, such as Syria and Iran.

Enticing for a bunch of cultural flaneurs like us, no? Cue Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven…

Istanbul, Turkey

Tehran, Iran

Morlaix, France

Rio de Janerio, Brazil

Stairs of Peace, Syria

Stairs of the Musical Theatre in Seoul, South Korea

Beirut, Lebanon

Beirut, Lebanon

Wuppertal, Germany

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA

Angers, France

Sicily, Italy

San Francisco, USA

San Francisco, USA

Valparaíso, Chile

Seoul, South Korea

Valparaíso, Chile

There’s lots missing from this list that I can remember from my own travels. If you’ve photographed a beautiful staircase somewhere in the world, feel free to add it to the comments section & give your photography skills a plug!

This story first appeared on Bored Panda