16 Karl Marx Statues.
How many have you visited?

Unique fact: The bronze bust by Laurence Bradshaw sits on a pedestal carved with the inscription "Workers of all lands unite." Marx is buried in Highgate East alongside his wife Jenny, daughter Eleanor, and grandson Harry; the original modest grave was relocated to its present prominent spot in 1954 and the bust unveiled two years later.

Why visit: Highgate Cemetery is itself a Grade I listed Victorian landscape, and the Marx tomb is the most-visited grave in it. Pair it with a walk through the rest of the cemetery: George Eliot, Douglas Adams, and Michael Faraday are nearby.

Unique fact: Locally nicknamed "der Nischel" (Saxon dialect for "the noggin"), the bronze head is 7.1 m tall and weighs 40 tonnes. Sculptor Lev Kerbel cast it in seven pieces in Leningrad. From 1953 to 1990 the city itself was renamed Karl-Marx-Stadt, and the monument is the last visible remnant of that era still in pride of place.

Why visit: You can walk around the back to see the wall behind it inscribed with "Workers of the world, unite!" in four languages. The square redesign in 2008 kept the monument as the focal point, and it's become a meeting spot rather than a relic.

Unique fact: The bronze sculptural group by Ludwig Engelhardt was a late East-German commission, unveiled three years before the Wall came down. Marx is seated; Engels stands behind him. Visitors regularly polish Marx's left knee to a bright shine, while the rest of the bronze has aged dark.

Why visit: The forum sits on prime central Berlin real estate facing the Spree, with the Berliner Dom and the Humboldt Forum directly across the river. There's an ongoing debate about moving the statues to make way for U-Bahn extension work, so see them in their original site while you can.

Unique fact: A 5.5 m bronze statue by Chinese sculptor Wu Weishan, gifted by the People's Republic of China to mark Marx's 200th birthday on 5 May 2018. It stands in Simeonstiftplatz, a few minutes' walk from Brückenstraße 10, the house where Marx was born in 1818, now the Karl-Marx-Haus museum.

Why visit: Pair the statue with the museum: the house has Marx's original library books, family photos, and the only handwritten draft of "The Communist Manifesto." The Roman Porta Nigra is two blocks away, and Trier compresses 2,000 years of European history into a 15-minute walk.

Unique fact: A 5.4 m granite monolith depicting Marx mid-oration, with quotes from "The Communist Manifesto" carved into the base. Designer: Lev Kerbel, the same sculptor as the Chemnitz "Nischel," but here working in stone instead of bronze. Faces the Bolshoi Theatre across Theatralnaya Ploshchad.

Why visit: One of the few Soviet-era monuments in central Moscow that survived the post-1991 statue removals untouched. The Bolshoi, the Metropol Hotel, and Lubyanka Square are all within a five-minute walk: a dense piece of 20th-century Russian history in one square.

Unique fact: The bronze bust sits on the Sadová Promenade alongside the Tepla river, between the spa colonnades. Marx visited Karlsbad three times (1874, 1875, 1876) for his liver and skin conditions; he stayed at "Germania" guesthouse and wrote letters to Engels from the spa. The bust survived the post-1989 round of statue removals because of its tourist-historical context, not political signaling.

Why visit: Walk the spa promenade between the Mlýnská and Sadová colonnades, sample the 12 hot springs from the traditional spa cups, and stop at the Marx bust as part of the route. The town's 19th-century guests included Goethe, Beethoven, Tsar Peter the Great, and Marx; the bronze plaques along the river note them all.