Sarkofag Tadeusza Kościuszki, Kraków

At the Wawel approach stands an equestrian monument to Tadeusz Kościuszko, Poland’s national hero. The rider wears a peasant coat and holds a rogatywka cap aloft; the figure stands on a bronze pedestal. Kościuszko served as a Continental Army colonel in the American Revolutionary War before launching the Kraków uprising in 1794.

Despite victory at Racławice, that campaign ended with Poland’s final partition. The sculpture was cast in 1900, but Austrian authorities refused permission to install it. It finally arrived at Wawel in 1921.

German occupiers destroyed it in 1940. The monument here is a reconstruction assembled in 1960 and presented to Kraków by Dresden’s residents. A matching copy later went to Detroit as a gift from Kraków.