Description of the attraction
On Gvardeisky Prospect in Kaliningrad, where military parades are held, a monument to 1200 guardsmen is erected. The monument is the mass grave of the 11th Guards Army, whose soldiers died during the assault on Koenigsberg. The monument to the guards is the work of the Moscow architects S. S. Nanushyan and I. D. Melchakov, six Lithuanian sculptors, which included B. Petrauskas, P. Vaivada and R. Jakimavičius, and the project manager Juozas Mikenas.
The Monument to 1200 Guardsmen, unveiled on September 30, 1945, was the first Soviet monument in the still-not-renamed Königsberg. The decision to perpetuate the feat of Soviet soldiers was made immediately after the Victory (May 1945) by the Military Council of the 11th Army, and the order to reburial the soldiers into a mass grave was signed by Colonel-General K. N. Galitsky. A year later, next to the monument, the sculptural compositions "Victory" (by the sculptor Juozas Mikenas) and "Storm" were installed. On the anniversary of the Victory Day, in 1960, an eternal flame was lit in front of the monument. In 1995, in the immediate vicinity of the monument, an Orthodox chapel (Ausfal Gate) was built in memory of the soldiers killed during the assault.
The monument to 1200 guards is located in the dammed part of Victory Park on an oval-shaped square. The dominant feature of the monument is a 26-meter obelisk in the shape of a five-pointed star with seven stone belts. On the edges of the obelisk there are reliefs depicting medals, orders, weapons and compositions of battle scenes. Along the walls of the square, there are four marble tombstones with a list of the names of the fallen soldiers. There are also pedestals and two obelisks of the heroes of the Soviet Union. The wall of rusticated granite blocks is decorated with sixteen bas-reliefs and marble slabs with the names of the fallen.
