The Moses Fountain — the Mosesbrunnen — stands in Bern's Old City in Switzerland, and it has been standing there, in one form or another, since the sixteenth century. That fact is less interesting than what happens when you actually stop in front of it and look.

Your eye goes first to the tablets. Not to Moses's face, not to the column, not to the polychrome drapery rendered in colours that still register as almost aggressive against old stone. The tablets, held out toward the viewer at roughly chest height on a figure positioned some four metres above street level, carry their Roman numerals in gold. And that is the decision the whole sculpture pivots on: someone chose to make the commandments readable.