13 Places With Cannonballs Stuck in Them - Atlas Obscura Lists

13 Places With Cannonballs Stuck in Them

Lodged into the side of churches, towers, and apartment signs, these hidden reminders of war are surprisingly common.

Usually, the well-aimed firing of a cannon ends in tragedy and destruction for the target, but on occasion, the building wins. In these cases, a lodged cannonball may stay put in a church wall, town home, or even a sturdy banister for decades, if not millennia.

The sources of these abandoned balls vary—launched by Napoleon’s army, say, or the Union forces. In some cases, their origin remains a mystery. Some are far less nefarious, like the one intentionally embedded in the side of an Edinburgh house to mark the level of water reservers. Whatever the reason for their existence, we’ve rounded up 13 unlikely places with cannonballs stuck in them.