# Warsaw statue in "The Pianist"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw-statue-in-the-pianist/183615>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [June 22, 2003, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw-statue-in-the-pianist/183615 "2003-06-22T19:35:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Spiratu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@Spiratu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiratu)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2003, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw-statue-in-the-pianist/183615/1 "2003-06-22T19:35:09Z")

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I just saw “The Pianist” last night - it was the free movie on campus. At least three times during the course of the movie, there was a shot of Warsaw with a statue in the foreground. By the end, the statue had been knocked over and was on the ground. I looked around on the google, but all I could find was a [Copernicus statue](http://www.davesag.com/poland/Pages/21.html) that doesn’t really look like the same one. Does anyone know what that statue is/was? Watching the movie, I felt like I was expected to recognize it.  
(I thought about putting this in Cafe Society, but it seems like more of a Warsaw question than a question about the movie.)

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**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\
**Post date:** [June 22, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/warsaw-statue-in-the-pianist/183615/2 "2003-06-22T22:09:14Z")

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I’ve seen the film and don’t specifically remember it being shown, but the other famous statue in Warsaw is that of Sigismund III in the square outside the Castle. It’s atop a narrow column and is basically a guy with a big cross. The _Rough Guide_ to Poland notes that it was felled by a shot from a tank in September 1944. This is collaborated by the more authoritive _Katalog Zabytkow Sztuki, Miastro Warszawa, Stare Miastro_ (_Ilustracje_, Warsaw, 1993, Fig. 582 - the _Tekst_ volume presumably has more detail, but I don’t know Polish), which notes that it was reconstructed in 1948-9.

As an aside on the Copernicus statue, the Warsaw Historical Museum still has the inflamatory plaque the Germans attached to it, asserting that he was German rather than Polish.