Surely a contender for the title of ‘World’s Most Beautiful Skatepark,’ this stunning urban park project by Constructo Skatepark Architecture incorporates design elements abstracted from an adjacent 17th-century fortress. Set in Luxembourg’s Peitruss Valley at the foot of the old Vauban fortification that encircles the old city, the Luxembourg City Skatepark pays tribute to the region’s heritage while creating an awesome gathering spot for locals.

Measuring nearly 30,000 square feet, the skatepark adds a series of ramps, bowls, stairs and a plaza to a popular green space full of pathways, playgrounds, picnic areas and other recreational hotspots.

Luxembourg publication Delano reports that on its opening day, the skatepark could almost have been mistaken for Venice Beach. Professional athletes swooped in to demonstrate their skateboard, BMX and scooter skills in front of a crowd of local skaters and other residents. The park is designed for use in a variety of sports at all ages and skill levels, including kids. It’s the only skatepark of its size in the country (which is one of Europe’s smallest at 999 square miles.)

Expanded under the renowned commander and military engineer Sebastien Le Prestre de Vauban between 1684 and 1688, the fortress was once one of Europe’s most impressive fortifications. Today, much of the original fortress is long gone, but its remains are a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Peitruss Valley sits at the base of the fortress (pictured above), acting as a natural border between the Old Town and the New Town.

Skateboarding isn’t classified as a real sport in the Netherlands, but one duo decided to take the resulting lack of decent official skate parks into their own hands with a guerrilla solution. Now, legally or not, virtually any public space can become a skate park thanks to a series of modular DIY components by Martijn Hartwig and Dario Goldbach.

The JIRAJIRA project is the duo’s final work as graphic design graduates at Willem de Kooning Academy, and consists of nine hand-painted ramps, quarter pipes and benches that can be loaded onto rolling platforms and transported to any location within Rotterdam. Dutch artists Leon Karen and Vincent Blok were commissioned to decorate each element, turning the collective park into a sort of portable gallery.

Keeping the whole setup mobile is ideal, since the cops are likely to come along and tell you to get lost. The modular parts are designed to work in conjunction with objects typically found in parks and city squares, like trash cans and benches. Since skaters are going to make use of any surfaces they can find anyway, possibly including some of the city’s temptingly curvy war monuments, it’s a decent compromise with the authorities.

Rotterdam’s only skate park, a metallic monstrosity known as the Westblaak, closed down after being deemed unsafe. In a profile on the city’s scene, skateboarding magazine Kingpin says that since nearly the entire city was destroyed during World War II, most of the streets are smooth and there’s plenty of eminently skateable new construction. “The only downside would be that The Netherlands is pretty much flat, so not too many stairs and or rails,” they note, so clearly the JIRAJIRA project is filling an underserved niche.

The infamous Old Vic Tunnels under London’s Waterloo Station are now home to the city’s first subterranean skate park with the opening of House of Vans, a cultural complex taking up the entire 32,000-square-foot space. In addition to the pool-style bowl, street section and mini-ramp for skaters, the space will offer a music venue, cafe, bar, cinema, artist studios and gallery space.

The four massive tunnels were the subject of a bidding war once the Old Vic Theather vacated the underground space, with Vans reportedly beating out Apple and Nike. The skate park is a fitting usage for it, located adjacent to London’s largest legal graffiti wall and another skate park on the Thames River.

The smooth new concrete surfaces and black-and-white checkered floors contrast with the centuries-old weathered brick surfaces of the original tunnels, which are still under control of England’s Department of Transport. Before it was taken over by Old Vic, the disused tunnel played host to the premiere of Banksy’s movie Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Skate sessions are free, but must be reserved in advance, with time slots getting snapped up as much as a month ahead of time. Artists selected to utilize the studios for free get the opportunity to display their work in the gallery space at the end of their tenancy.

Skaters at this park in Lugano, Switzerland don’t have to pull out their phones to check the time – they can just glance down at a series of colored lines painted right onto the concrete of the bowl as a modern sundial. A ribbon of rainbow hues curves up and down the undulating surface, the sun and shadows revealing the current hour.

A different line of color indicates each hour of the day, marked off as the sun passes overhead. Designed by Moscow group Zuk Club, the vibrant park is like an abstract modern mural customized specifically to the shape of the bowl and the surrounding area.

It’s an interesting and visually resting concept, though perhaps no match for the largest and most complex skate parks around the world. Skaters who find ordinary skate parks unimaginative should check out 13 examples of highly skateable architecture, ranging from the specially renovated interior of a hunting lodge to Zaha Hadid’s futuristic science center in Germany.

It’s not just a skate park, it’s an architectural landmark. Factoria Joven (“youth factory”) is a skate park and climbing wall in Merida, Spain, which opened in  March 2011. Its bright, modern geometric design was inspired by the construction methods used to create Chinese dragons.

Architects José Selgas and Lucía Cano of SelgasCano Studio took on the challenge of creating an urban gathering space for young people which could be constructed of inexpensive building materials.

Made largely of vivid, lightweight polycarbonate and completed in just 13 months, Factoria Joven has quickly become everything the project collaborators wished for, bustling with athletic activity day and night.

In addition to a large climbing wall and space for biking and skating, Factoria Joven includes a computer lab and dance studio, meeting rooms and spaces for street theater, video, electronic music and graffiti.