Why Is There a Massive Pink Bunny Lying on an Italian Hillside?

This odd little Google Earth discovery was spotted from high above Artesina in Italy’s Piedmont region, and yes, that’s a giant pink rabbit sprawled across the landscape. It’s an artwork by Gelitin, a Vienna-based art collective with a taste for the wonderfully weird. The bunny appeared in 2005, built by a team using mostly straw and wool. About a ton of wool became its “skin,” stitched together over several years with help from hundreds of older women.

If you’re hiking nearby and stumble on it in real life, the sheer scale, plus that slightly spooky face, can be a lot at first. But the point isn’t to keep people at a distance. This sculpture was made for visitors to climb, lounge, and mess around on like it’s a surreal playground. Gelitin planned for it to weather naturally. Rotting and falling apart are part of the concept, so they never tried to preserve it.

Delia Leyvens