Inside This French City, There's a Littler City Where the People Are 3 Inches Tall

Travel into the heart of Nantes, a western French city of around 900,000 souls, and you'll find yourself at the gates of another, much smaller metropolis. Dollhouse-sized apartment towers rise from a dirt lot, cracked and looking like they were recently bombed; lurking behind windows and milling on the streets are business-suited men so tiny they'd be crushed under a normal human foot. And they look like they're fully expecting that to happen, what with the way they're posed in suicidal positions and have worry-wart grimaces on their little hamster faces.

France's newest civilization of Mopeville was the creation of Spanish artist Isaac Cordal, who fabricated more than 2,000 pieces to build the 66-by-60-foot installation. It's the latest work of public art for Cordal, who's known for infesting cities with teensy homunculi he casts from concrete, and is part of the annual celebration of public art, "Le voyage a Nantes." The festival's organizers write that it felt natural to choose Cordal to rep Nantes this year: