Pole Position

Sightseers in Wrocław don’t just seek out its beautiful buildings and bridges – there’s the local gnome community to hunt down, too. There are now more than 400 gnomes around the Polish city, but many tourists don’t realise that these bronze statues are actually miniature freedom fighters. They’re symbolic of the Orange Alternative, a 1980s protest movement that peacefully opposed the Communist regime in a surprisingly playful (and petite) way by painting dwarfs on walls where the police had covered up antigovernment slogans.