As some of you probably know, I live in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam. And in our city there are just such columns. In the 18th century, the streets were narrow and it was impossible to understand where the pavement was and where the sidewalk was. The city government began to stick the muzzle of cannons into the ground. It somehow separated the street. Here. Also, the drunk drivers did not crash into buildings, but all that. These are the columns to this day, but they have changed a lot. The first thing that is noticeable is that they have become like a penis. More than once I have seen how tourists freaked out over this failure and took pictures with these columns in their mouths. I don't know why the government chose this design, maybe because Amsterdam is a city of drugs and prostitution, I don't know. I searched on Google and there are many versions about these posts. One of them is that they are supposedly little men in helmets who guard the city (probably some drunk woodpecker wrote).