The Banpo Bridge is lined with 380 nozzles, and with a total length of 3,740 feet, it’s the world’s largest bridge fountain, an official Guinness World Record holder. Illuminated with, yes, a rainbow of colors by night, and using water pumped from the Han River below, the fountain puts on several 20-minute shows daily.

Fire adds a thrilling, unusual element to this bronze fountain at the Place d’Arms. Its 32-minute dancing waters routine takes place every hour during summer evenings, and this battle between the water and the flame gives the sculpture its name—the Joust.

With a base of 18,117 square feet, this 85-ton bronze fountain is one of the world’s largest fountains. The water, which flows inward, is said to bring good luck to those who touch it and can even display customized laser messages. No surprise that it’s become a popular way for locals to propose.

A gentle green giant with crystals for eyes and a fountain for a mouth faces out from a hillside in the market town of Wattens, Austria. Walk beneath the curtain of water into the giant to enter Crystal Worlds, a slightly surreal and sparkling series of art installations created by artist André Heller in 1995 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Swarovski crystal.

Some tourists come here just to hedge their bets: legend has it that if you toss a coin into the water, you’ll someday return to Rome, a city of 300 fountains. But it’s worth lingering to take stock of this iconic Baroque fountain with an 85-foot-high travertine façade and detailed marble statues depicting the taming of the waters; Oceanus reigns triumphant from a seashell chariot. The nearby Bernini-designed Four Rivers Fountain is a close rival.

With 6,600 lights, 25 projectors, and nearly 1,500 individual fountains, the Dubai Fountain on the 30-acre Burj Dubai Lake amounts to the largest synchronized music and light show in the world—for now, anyway. WET Designs completed it in 2008, and the location offers fantastic 360-degree viewing opportunities.

Created for Peter the Great in the 1720s, the grounds of the “Russian Versailles” feature a series of 64 opulent fountains and more than 200 sculptures known, in fitting hyperbole, as the Grand Cascade. The centerpiece is a gilded Samson wrestling a lion that shoots a jet of water over 65 feet high from its open mouth. Amazingly, all the fountains operate without pumps.

The world’s largest indoor fountain lets water cascade from the ceiling and also shoot up from the floor at a height of 59 feet and 8 inches. Messages and pictures are formed in the falling water during the 10-minute display every hour, and the accompanying music can be anything from classical to hard rock.

The 13 fountains in Parque de la Reserva made a big splash upon opening in 2007 and have become one of Lima’s most popular attractions. They range from the 250-feet-plus-tall Magic Fountain, to the romantic, traditional Fountain of Illusion, to the Labyrinth of Dreams. Be prepared to get wet if you decide to walk through the circuit.

Greek mythology supplies the name for this mesmerizing, if dainty, fountain on the grounds of Seaham Hall: Charybdis was a water nymph punished by Zeus and turned into a whirlpool that swallowed up ships. William Pye thought up the swirling vortex design, which uses high-pressure water pumped within an acrylic cylinder.

Every half hour in the afternoon and every 15 minutes at night, the Fountains of Bellagio put on a free song-and-dance show illuminated by 5,000 white lights. Across this 8.5-acre lake, 208 fountains sway to the likes of Gene Kelly, Pavarotti, and Elvis, shooting water over 450 feet into the air—thanks to pioneering technology now imitated worldwide.