Tucked away in Moldova, rests a small statue of the Little Prince, the famed character of the French writer, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The smallest public statue in all of Moldova, the Little Prince captures the whimsy and imagination of all who pass by it. 

In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s timeless story, a fictional pilot crashes in the sands of the Sahara only to find himself confronted with an otherworldly fellow, the Little Prince. The seemingly simple plot weaves life-long truths into its pages, as the Little Prince encourages the pilot to look beneath the surface of what is seen and find the deeper meaning. 

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret,” the Little Prince confides in the pilot. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” It is these nuggets of truth that have helped this novel stand the test of time. 

In Moldova, the Little Prince statue is so tiny that it can easily be missed. The total overall height of the bronze monument is about four inches (11 centimeters), but the Prince himself is even smaller. The statue stands on a metal fence, by a lake in Valea Morilor Park, replacing one of the spheres that adorn the fenceposts. The idea is that all of the spheres of the fence represent the planets mentioned in the novel with the Little Prince standing atop his home planet of asteroid “B-612.”