Warsaw Mermaid Statue

This guide to the Warsaw Mermaid Statue traces the bronze figure sculpted by Konstanty Hegel in 1855 and the legend behind her sword and shield, a mermaid who swam up the Vistula, was freed by fishermen, and vowed to guard the city. It follows the dozens of bullet holes she took during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and the decades before the war when the city moved her from square to warehouse to rowing club, earning her the nickname the walking statue. Vandals stole her sword again in the nineteen sixties, decades before the statue in the square today took her place.