Gadling

For the past week, Red Corner has covered the fate of communist statues since communism itself fell more than 15 years ago. We’d like to conclude this series with a final post about the remains of a notoriously hideous monument which are nearly invisible today, yet unknowingly gazed upon by thousands of tourists on a daily basis.

Prague is the most visited capital of the former Warsaw Pact, yet very few of the millions of tourists who trek across its famous Charles Bridge have any idea what it is they are looking at when they gaze north from the bridge and spy an enormous empty plinth, nearly overgrown with foliage, that sits atop a nearby hill.

This is where the world’s largest Stalin statue once stood.

The fifty meter tall monument, ugly and hated by so many, dominated the Prague skyline-but only for seven years. The unlucky builders finished the statue in 1955 just before de-Stalinization and watched curiously as authorities then dynamited it out of existence in 1962. Only the massive stone plinth remained behind as though it were the star of some Ozymandias poem.

Like poisoned soil, nothing sprouted from the plinth until communism itself died. Then, a weird succession of items followed; a massive lips-and-tongue Rolling Stones banner, a 35 foot statue of singer Michael Jackson, a billboard for a local politician, and ultimately the winner of a design-something-for-the-plinth contest-an enormous metronome.

For a while, the city’s first rock and roll club operated in a bomb shelter beneath the plinth but it was eventually shut down by authorities. It is now apparently used to grow mushrooms.

In the beautiful city of Prague, so overwhelming in its fine architecture, little thought is given to this overgrown plinth and the evil monument it once supported-one so very horrible that the sculptor who designed it killed himself a few days before it was unveiled. Tourists pass by oblivious and continue on their merry way. Oh my, how beautiful this town is!