Charles de Gaulle, Warsaw

Here is Warsaw’s monument to Charles de Gaulle: a marching figure cast in bronze, set on a substantial pedestal by the Charles de Gaulle Roundabout. De Gaulle was the French commander who organized the Free French struggle against Nazi Germany during the war, then became president of France. His likeness makes a strong choice for this busy Warsaw junction: it brings a major French public figure into the city’s everyday current.

Notice the uniform and the kepi, the flat-topped military cap, which give the sculpture its unmistakably formal character. The whole monument reaches four metres. French sculptor Jean Cardot created the figure, while Andrzej Kiciński, Marcin Bednarczyk, and Robert Jaworski designed its base and the circular setting around it.

The casting was made in Bielsko-Biała by Marek Żebrowski from Cardot’s mould. This Warsaw statue follows an earlier de Gaulle monument unveiled along Paris’s Champs-Élysées. Warsaw’s version was unveiled on the fifteenth of May, two thousand five, by France’s foreign minister Michel Barnier. It stands before the Banking and Financial Centre, a compact civic gesture connecting Warsaw and France through a leader identified with wartime resistance and national renewal.