Fryderyk Chopin – Warsaw, Poland
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vraatja
N 52° 12.881 E 021° 01.685
34U E 501918 N 5784916
The most famous monument in the world of the great composer is located in the Royal Lazienki Park in front of the gate to Ujazdowskie Avenue near the Belvedere. The monument is among the most recognized symbols of Warsaw.
Waymark Code: WMJ7W5
Location: Mazowieckie, Poland
Date Posted: 10/07/2013
Views: 16
The Chopin Statue is a large bronze statue of Frédéric Chopin that now stands in the upper part of Warsaw's Royal Baths Park aka Lazienki Park, adjacent to Aleje Ujazdowskie (Ujazdów Avenue).
It was designed in 1907 by Waclaw Szymanowski for its planned erection on the centenary of Chopin's birth in 1910, but its execution was delayed by controversy about the design, then by the outbreak of World War I. The statue was finally cast and erected in 1926.
During World War II, the statue was blown up on May 31, 1940. It was the first monument that was destroyed by the occupying Germans in Warsaw. According to local legend, the next day a handwritten sign was found at the site which read: "I don’t know who destroyed me, but I know why: so that I won’t play the funeral march for your leader."
The original mould for the statue, which had survived the war, made it possible to cast a replica, which was placed at the original site in 1958. At the statue's base, since 1959, on summer Sunday afternoons are performed free piano recitals of Chopin's compositions.
The stylized willow over Chopin's seated figure echoes a pianist's hand and fingers.
A 1:1-scale replica of Szymanowski's statue stands in Hamamatsu, Japan. There are also preliminary plans to erect another replica along Chicago's lakefront, in addition to a different sculpture commemorating the artist in Chopin Park, for the 200th anniversary of Chopin's birth (2010).
Szymanowski's statue was the world's tallest Chopin monument until the unveiling, on March 3, 2007, of the slightly taller, modernistic bronze in Shanghai, China.
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