Liberty Monument

The lovely lady with the palm frond, proclaiming freedom throughout the city from atop Gellért Hill, is just east of the Citadella. Standing 14m high, she was erected in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945. But the victims’ names (previously in Cyrillic letters on the plinth) and the statues of the Soviet soldiers were removed in 1992 and sent to what is now called Memento Park. In fact, the monument had been designed by the politically ‘flexible’ sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl much earlier for the ultraright government of Admiral Miklós Horthy. After the war, when procommunist monuments were in short supply, Kisfaludi Strobl passed it off as a memorial to the Soviets. Today the monument is dedicated to ‘Those who gave up their lives for Hungary’s independence, freedom and prosperity’. If you walk west for a few minutes along Citadella sétány north of the fortress, you’ll come to a lookout at arguably the best vantage point in Budapest.