Description of the attraction
The monument to the most famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko is located opposite the no less famous red building of the university, which now bears the name of the poet.
The idea of erecting a monument appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, but the city treasury did not find funds for it, so they had to turn to the public for help. It took about five years to raise funds, and only then an order was issued to erect the monument. Already at the stage of preparing the project of the monument, many disputes arose. For example, the local leadership did not approve of the idea of placing a monument on Mikhailovskaya Square, he was more impressed by the idea of installing a monument to Princess Olga here (this is what they did later). A lot of options were studied and, finally, we stopped at a site near Petrovskaya Alley, but then a new problem arose - the possibility of landslides, the fight against which significantly increased the cost of installing the monument. The competition for the best design of the monument turned out to be ambiguous - several of them had to be held, but the winner was never named, and this despite the fact that world-famous sculptors, for example, the Frenchman Rodin or the Italian Shioritino, took part in it.
So the matter dragged on until the outbreak of the First World War, when everyone was no longer up to the monument. Only in 1919, on Mikhailovskaya Square, on the pedestal that remained about the demolished monument to Princess Olga, a modest bust of the poet appeared. A full-fledged bronze monument to Taras Shevchenko by the sculptor Manizer appeared in Kiev only in March 1939, when the 125th anniversary of the birth of Kobzar was celebrated. Although the poet in this case looks not at his beloved Dnieper, which he repeatedly sang in poetry, but at the university, which now bears his name, and not the name of the holy prince Vladimir the Great, as it once did.
