Mikołaj Kopernik, Warszawa

Warsaw’s monument to Mikołaj Kopernik stands before Staszic Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście. Bertel Thorvaldsen’s bronze seated astronomer holds a compass and armillary sphere. The memorial carries dedications in Latin and Polish and preserves a wartime story of underground resistance, removal, recovery, and restoration.

Here before Staszic Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście is Warsaw’s monument to the astronomer Mikołaj Kopernik. The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen devised it in eighteen twenty-two, and the finished monument was unveiled in eighteen thirty. Copernicus is cast in bronze, seated with a compass in his right hand and an armillary sphere in his left.

Let your gaze rest on the pedestal, where Latin and Polish dedications address Copernicus as the gift of a grateful homeland and compatriots. Public subscriptions and the scholar Stanisław Staszic paid for the monument; Staszic had initially intended it for Toruń, Copernicus’s birthplace, before political change brought the project to Warsaw. This statue also became a target of resistance during the German occupation.

The occupiers obscured its earlier texts and attached a German plaque. On the eleventh of February nineteen forty-two, Maciej Aleksy Dawidowski removed that plaque. After the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans carried the damaged statue away for melting, but their retreat spared it.

It returned to Warsaw in nineteen forty-five, then underwent restoration before another unveiling four years later. Around the monument, a pavement model of Copernicus’s Solar System was added in two thousand seven.