Thats her proper name, I suppose. She reminded me of the Statue of Liberty. Since I affectionatley named the Statue of Liberty, Our Lady of the Harbor, I dubbed this statue, Our Lady of the Hill, or just, Our Lady.
She stands on the most prominent point in Buda, the Citadel. The guidebook says this spot has the best views of the city. It certainly worked for me, though there must have been a bizillion breathtaking views.
She was a gift from the Soviets. Here is what my Lonely Planet guidebook says: "Some 14m high, it was erected in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945, but the victim's names in Cyrillic letters on the plinth and the statues of the Soviet soldiers were removed in 1992. In fact, the monument had been designed by the politically "flexable' sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobi much earlier for the ultraright government of Admiral Miklos Horthy. After the war, when procommunist monuments were in short supply, Kisfaludi Strobi passed it off as a memorial to the Soviets."
Our tourguide on the tourist bus told us that all the surviving Soviet statues were taken to Statue Park (we'll go there) but two: Our Lady, which includes her two sidekicks and another statue which ironically stands in front of the American Embassy.
Julia (Yulia) took us to visit her at night.
I never felt I got her in good light...
She stands on the most prominent point in Buda, the Citadel. The guidebook says this spot has the best views of the city. It certainly worked for me, though there must have been a bizillion breathtaking views.
She was a gift from the Soviets. Here is what my Lonely Planet guidebook says: "Some 14m high, it was erected in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945, but the victim's names in Cyrillic letters on the plinth and the statues of the Soviet soldiers were removed in 1992. In fact, the monument had been designed by the politically "flexable' sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobi much earlier for the ultraright government of Admiral Miklos Horthy. After the war, when procommunist monuments were in short supply, Kisfaludi Strobi passed it off as a memorial to the Soviets."
Our tourguide on the tourist bus told us that all the surviving Soviet statues were taken to Statue Park (we'll go there) but two: Our Lady, which includes her two sidekicks and another statue which ironically stands in front of the American Embassy.
Julia (Yulia) took us to visit her at night.
I never felt I got her in good light...
but I got her from several angles.
The sidekick statue to her right is a passionate Soviet youth. To the left (significant??) is the St. George and the dragon statue.
When I went on the tourist bus, my companions in the English speaking group were two young Romanians who had plans to immigrate to Canada as soon as their paperwork was processed. Our guide was telling us about this "triumph of good over evil" theme when the Romanian guy says, "Which one represents the Soviet?" We all had to laugh and I was quite happy to have them as tourist companions.
We even saw Our Lady from the train as we were leaving Budapest.
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