Warsaw Uprising Monument

The Monument to the Warsaw Uprising was finally unveiled after decades of ideological dispute on 1 August 1989, the 45th anniversary of the start of the uprising, on Krasinski Square in front of the Supreme Court. Designed by sculptor Wincenty Kucma and architect Jacek Budyn, it consists of two dynamic bronze groups: the first shows insurgents storming out of a doorway under a large concrete pillar; the second depicts fighters and a priest descending into a manhole, a reference to the famous escapes through the Warsaw sewers. The unveiling by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in the final weeks of communist Poland was seen as a belated and ambivalent state recognition of the long-tabooed Home Army. Today the monument is one of Warsaw's central sites of memory and the setting for the annual W-Hour commemorations on 1 August at 5 pm.