High up on the summit of Carlton Hill in Edinburgh, Scotland, stands the country’s National Monument. But far from being the source of national pride, the fallacious project has been a national embarrassment, a disgrace, a folly.

The monument was supposed to be a national memorial to the Scottish soldiers and sailors who died fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. If completed, it would have resembled the iconic Parthenon of Athens. Instead, all the Scottish could muster was to erect twelve pillars. The city quickly lost interest and refused to contribute funds for the completion of the monument, and the structure remained incomplete for two hundred years.

Photo credit: jgenard/Flickr