Juliusz Słowacki, Warsaw

The seated figure before the former Ministry of Treasury building is Warsaw’s memorial to Juliusz Słowacki, a major voice of Polish Romantic writing. It belongs to Bank Square in the downtown district, where the poet’s presence carries a strong civic weight. Notice the calm, concentrated character of the sculpture: it gives the writer an air of thought rather than theatrical display.

Edward Wittig created the design in nineteen thirty-two for a planned monument in Lwów. That project did not take shape there, but the model survived in the National Museum in Warsaw, allowing this figure to be cast in bronze many years later. The memorial was unveiled in two thousand one, occupying the site where a monument to Feliks Dzerzhinsky had been removed after the communist era.

Its making also became a public occasion. A founding document for the project was signed at the Presidential Palace, bearing the signature of Pope John Paul the Second, and President Aleksander Kwaśniewski formed an honorary committee for the monument. A landscaped square now frames the statue, giving this long-delayed design a setting of its own.