Description of the attraction
The Adam Mickiewicz Monument is a classicist monument to the Polish poet, political publicist and activist Adam Mickiewicz, erected in Warsaw in 1898.
In February 1897, an article was published in one of the city magazines promoting the idea of building a monument to Adam Mitskevich. Other print media quickly took up the initiative. The writer Henryk Sienkiewicz brought this idea to the attention of the Warsaw intelligentsia and, by joining forces, they managed to convince the authorities to allow this construction. A public committee was founded, headed by Sienkiewicz, Count Michal Radziwill and Zygmunt Vasilevsky. The committee dealt with funding issues, and also encouraged citizens to donate funds for construction. The required amount was collected quickly enough, after which the sculptor Cyprian Godebski was hired.
The monument was built on the site of buildings destroyed in 1865. A bronze statue of 4.2 meters high was cast in the Italian city of Pistoia, and a red granite column was produced near Milan. The monument was inaugurated on December 24, 1898 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the poet's birth. Extensive cultural events were planned for all citizens on the opening day, but the tsarist authorities were afraid of such a large-scale gathering of people and banned all marches and speeches. Thus, the monument was unveiled in complete silence in the presence of 12,000 people.
After the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the monument was deliberately destroyed by German troops. The remaining parts of the monument were transported to Germany. After the end of the war, Polish soldiers found the head and several other parts of the statue in Hamburg. The monument was exactly restored and the celebration was reopened on January 28, 1950. The last parts of the original monument were returned to Poland only in the late 1980s.
