The Liberty Monument, the lovely lady with the palm frond in her outstretched arms, proclaiming freedom throughout the city, is southeast of the Citadella. Standing 14m high, she was raised in 1947 in tribute to the Soviet soldiers who died liberating Budapest in 1945. The victims’ names in Cyrillic letters on the plinth and the soldiers' statues were removed in 1992 and sent to Memento Park. The inscription reads: 'To those who gave up their lives for Hungary’s independence, freedom and prosperity'.
The monument had been originally designed by the politically ‘flexible’ sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl (1884–1975) before WWII for the ultraright government of Admiral Miklós Horthy. After the war, when pro-communist monuments were in short supply, Kisfaludi Strobl passed it off as a memorial to the Soviets.
