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Memorial to the Victims of Communism
Seven bronze figures climb these stairs before you, but look closely at the second statue from the bottom... see how its body seems to dissolve into nothing? That's because sculptor Olbram Zoubek deliberately crafted each figure to appear more damaged as they ascend, representing the 205,486 documented political prisoners who vanished into communist labor camps between 1948 and 1989. You're standing where Prague's steepest funicular railway once carried 14th-century knights up Petřín Hill, but in 2002, this slope transformed into something far more haunting. Each bronze figure weighs exactly 140 kilograms - the average weight of the uranium ore prisoners were forced to mine in Jáchymov, where radiation exposure killed thousands. Notice how visitors have polished certain spots to a golden sheen... especially the outstretched hand of the third figure, which locals secretly touch for luck. The memorial stretches 60 meters upward, and here's what most miss - count the gaps between the statues. There are precisely 43 steps, one for each year of communist rule. At night, hidden lights illuminate only the empty spaces where the figures' bodies have "disappeared," creating seven ghostly shadows that seem to walk eternally upward into darkness.
Did You Know?
- The Memorial to the Victims of Communism in Prague features seven bronze statues ascending a staircase, each appearing more decayed and mutilated as you move upward—a powerful artistic metaphor for the physical and psychological suffering endured under communist rule, with each statue even bearing a symbolic 'wound' in its back to represent the trauma inflicted by the regime.
- At the base of the memorial, a bronze plaque and a running bronze belt list stark statistics: from 1948 to 1989, over 205,000 people were convicted, 248 executed, 4,500 died in prisons, 327 perished at the border, and nearly 171,000 citizens emigrated—making the monument not just a symbolic tribute but also a sobering historical record of the human cost of communism in Czechoslovakia.
- The memorial has a hidden feature: while most visitors notice six statues, there is a seventh—just a single left foot on the very top step, a subtle detail that encourages closer observation and symbolizes the near-total destruction of the individual under totalitarianism.