Star Wars: Darth Vader was sculpted… on a cathedral!

Mugs, t-shirts, posters or figurines with his effigy, and even a street with his name in the city of Reykjavik, in Iceland … The most famous villain in the history of cinema, mythical figure of the Star Wars saga (available on Disney +), is literally everywhere.

As long as you lift your head and look in the right place, you might even spot it while visiting the National Cathedral in the city of Washington. Indeed, as curious and unusual as it may seem on a religious building such as this one, the famous helmet of Darth Vader has indeed been sculpted (in the tradition of gargoyles and grotesques, these stone monsters supposed to repel the mal) on the facade of the sixth largest cathedral in the world.

As we can find out on the official site of the monument, it was at the end of the construction work of the Washington National Cathedral (which lasted almost a century, from 1907 to 1990) that a sculpture representing Vader was integrated on its west facade.

This original last-minute addition was made in the 1980s, as part of a children’s art competition organized by National Geographic Kids magazine, and whose winners would see their works integrated into the monument under construction. While the whole world was in the grip of Star Wars fever soon after the release of The Empire Strikes Back, the young Christopher Rader thus proposed a drawing of Darth Vader, which was selected, and transformed into a gargoyle by the professional sculptor Jay Hall Carpenter.

If you are a fan of Star Wars and you go to Washington one day, you will now know where to find the most famous character of the saga.

(Re) discover our special video dedicated to Darth Vader …