Monument to Bohdan Khmelnitsky description and photo - Ukraine: Kiev (Topic)

Monument to Bogdan Khmelnitsky description and photo - Ukraine: Kiev. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photos and a map showing the nearest significant objects.

Photo and description

Everyone who enters the Sophia Square in Kiev cannot fail to notice another masterpiece located there. This is a monument to the most famous hetman of Ukraine, who raised the people to the war of liberation, Bogdan Khmelnitsky.

The idea of installing such a monument first appeared in the 19th century, more precisely in 1868. The project was proposed by the most eminent sculptor of that century - Mikhail Mikeshin. The original composition was supposed to include many more characters, symbolizing both the oppressors of the Ukrainian people and the people themselves. So, under the hooves of the hetman's horse, the corpse of a Jesuit was supposed to lie, covered with a torn Polish flag, behind the horse was the figure of a Polish nobleman falling from a cliff, a little lower was the figure of a murdered Jewish tenant, with a stranglehold on the church property. The granite rock on which it was planned to place the monument was supposed to stand on a powerful pedestal decorated with bas-reliefs on three sides. In front, the composition was complemented by figures of a singing kobzar and his listeners. In 1870, permission was obtained to raise funds for the monument, however, since things were going hard, and the composition itself was recognized as not politically correct, it was decided to confine itself to the sculpture of one hetman. To a large extent, the construction of the monument was helped by the Naval Department, which donated more than one and a half tons of decommissioned ship copper, from which in 1879 a statue of the hetman was cast at one of the St. Petersburg factories.

Since there was no money for the pedestal, for many years the monument stood on a pedestal made of ordinary bricks. And only in 1888, on the occasion of the celebration of the nine hundredth anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus, a worthy pedestal appeared at the monument, on which to this day the figure of a truly extraordinary personality stands.

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Topic: Monument to Bohdan Khmelnitsky description and photo - Ukraine: Kiev.