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By Lisa Halvorsen and Samantha Chapnick

Some visitors call it kitsch. Others see it as genius. But just knowing that someone would devote his life to building miniature models of the Eiffel Tower, Coliseum, and other famous buildings and shrines out of recycled junk is reason enough to take a detour to Cullman, Alabama.

Granted, this charming southern town, located about an hour outside of Huntsville, has a number of historic buildings worth a drive-by. There's also the Evelyn Burrow Museum, a showcase of fine china and porcelain, and reportedly, the largest collection of horse statues in the South. However, Cullman's star attraction is, without question, the Ave Maria Grotto.

This four-acre park features 125 miniature replicas of world-famous landmarks, churches, and religious shrines. Over a period of more than 40 years Brother Joseph Zoettl constructed them all by hand using salvaged materials. The scale of these miniatures is wildly disproportionate, no surprise since he used picture postcards and photographs as his main source of information.

Born in Bavaria in 1878, Brother Joseph arrived in northern Alabama when he was 14, and soon enrolled as a student at the St. Bernard Abbey. He later joined the Benedictine Order, initially serving in Virginia and Tuscumbia, Alabama, before returning to Cullman.

You've got admire this diminutive Benedictine monk. An accident left him a hunchback, which ruled out ordination as a priest. He was assigned instead to the physical plant where he spent much of the day shoveling coal. He had no calling to be an artist or an architect, at least not until the day the Fathers asked him to make miniature grottoes to sell in the gift shop.

Before long he was building larger replicas for the abbey garden for the monks to enjoy. When the public began showing up in large numbers to view the "art," the structures were moved, in 1934, to their present location on a wooded hillside on the monastery grounds. And that's when Brother Joseph really got busy, as you'll see when you wander through the terraced gardens.

You enter the shrine through the gift shop, where you can purchase everything from postcards and candles to snow globes and shot glasses. As you follow the meandering path, you'll discover an amazing juxtaposition of basilicas, churches, and religious shrines with more modern tourist attractions. St. Peter's Basilica shares a hillside with the Alamo, for example, though you'll also spot the Parthenon, Tower of Babel, Temple of Jerusalem, and even the Statue of Liberty.

Since Brother Joseph rarely traveled, only a handful of his works are of places he had actually seen in Landshut, his birthplace, or at St. Bernard's Abbey. With his one-dimensional postcards for reference, he could only speculate what the other three sides of the buildings looked like---which makes these miniatures all the more fascinating as does his source of building materials.

He used whatever he had on hand, could salvage, or people sent him. Green glass fishing balls, the kind fishermen use as floats on nets, became domes on castles. Broken colored glass was ideal for stained glass windows. He had a particular penchant for cobalt blue cold cream jars although old toilet bowl floats, costume jewelry, cat's-eye marbles, and tiny tiles--piles of tiles--all found a place on his painstakingly created replicas, each piece individually cemented in place.

Nearly half of the miniatures are Holy Land scenes, giving the shrine its nickname of "Little Jerusalem." There's even an Ave Maria Grotto, an artificial cave with fake stalactites and the requisite Virgin Mary, which gives the attraction its name.

Brother Joseph also had a whimsical side, which manifested itself in his "Hansel and Gretel Visit the Temple of the Fairies" and odd additions, such as toy plastic elephants in his Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

He finished his last tiny replica, the Basilica in Lourdes, in 1958, three years before his death at age 83. He's buried in the Abbey Cemetery, not far from the grotto gift shop and his beloved miniature buildings and shrines.

Ave Maria Grotto, located at 1600 E. St. Bernard Drive SE, Cullman, Alabama, is open daily (except Christmas and New Year's Day), April through September, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., October through March 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $7 (adults), $5 (seniors), $4.50 (children 6 to 12). For more information, call (256) 734-4110 or log onto www.avemariagrotto.com.