All throughout Europe and Mexico, and in the Catholic areas of the United States and Canada, one may encounter shrines built along roads and in other highly visible places. They can be built by cities on public property, or by business owners and other private citizens on private property but for the public good. They are built for the general glory of God, or for a variety of more particular purposes, such as in gratitude to God and His Saints for certain blessings, as memorials to some great civic event in which God intervened, or as memorials to the dead, as is quite common along highways in the United States. They are often built to beseech God and His Saints: for example, a city that sits next to a volcano might build a shrine to St. Agatha, who is invoked against volcanic eruptions, or a person who is afraid of violent storms might build a shrine to St. Barbara, who is invoked against such inclement weather.

These roadside shrines can be very simple or quite elaborate, and they can come in many styles, such as simple wooden crosses, niches in walls, small towers, grotto configurations, or even very tiny chapels that hold images and the means to light votive candles. They can be made of almost any material, and some are relatively unadorned, while others are painted, or tiled with mosaics in exquisite ways. Grotto-style shrines have even been built out of discarded iron bathtubs half-buried in the ground and painted, with their backsides often plastered and adorned with stone, tiles, colored glass, or shells -- a common thing seen in the Eastern United States (see picture at right. When these shrines are Marian in focus, they're often referred to colloquially as "Bathtub Marys" -- and either humorously or derisively as "Marys-In-the-Half-Shell").

Below is a sampling of wayside shrines to inspire you to keep this Catholic tradition alive and to give you ideas as to how to do so (hover your mouse over each picture to see where the shrine is located). If you have land, if you own a home or business, consider making a little public monument to God and His Saints to forever keep them in people's minds.