Szabadság-szobor

This guide to the Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill in Budapest follows the woman behind the bronze figure that has topped the hillside since 1947: a young nurse named Erzsébet Gaál, stopped at a tram stop in 1945 by sculptor Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl and asked to pose with a palm frond raised overhead. It traces how the monument's meaning was rewritten more than once, from a tribute to Soviet soldiers to today's dedication to Hungary's freedom, while the woman who posed for it went unrecognized. Look up at the statue from the base of the hill, where the full fourteen-meter figure comes into view.