HOOVES clacked on cobbled streets as horses made their way around the plaza. Tourists paused in front of stately old buildings, snapped a photo or two, and hurried on to their next destination. But in the middle of the bustling crowd, bright spots of gold?and silver and white and the occasional blue?stood still, oblivious to the activity around them. They were living statues, painted characters who stood still on Europe?s major plazas.

Once in a while, tourists stopped to snap photos and dropped coins, which were often acknowledged with winks, small smiles, and occasionally, a salute or a curtsy (depending on the characters they were imitating). There were a lot of characters: Mozart lived again in front of the Hofburg Chapel in Vienna, while Marie Antoinette dropped coquettish curtsies in Paris. Occasionally, Julius Caesar deigned to make an appearance in Amsterdam. Jaded travelers often look with disdain at the tourists who surrounded the living statues, but there?s no denying that they?re almost as much of a tourist attraction as the buildings where they had set up for a long day of standing still.