As public debate rages over the removal or vandalism of statues in the United States and the United Kingdom, we look back on some of the monuments brought down in recent history.
Falling Down: History's Toppled Statues And Monuments
- By Amos Chapple
1
The head of a monument to Russian Tsar Alexander III during its dismantling in central Moscow. The gigantic statue was ripped down soon after the 1917 revolution that led to communist rule in Russia.
2
A tsarist double-headed eagle being removed from a spire of the Kremlin after the Bolshevik Revolution. The eagles were replaced by the communist red stars that crown the Kremlin's spires today.
3
Fragments of a statue of mounted Polish King Wladyslaw II Jagiello lie on the ground after it was destroyed by Nazi troops following the 1939 invasion of Poland
4
Nazi troops await the order to pull down a bust of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938.
5
Workers removing the sign from the former Adolf Hitler Street in Trier, Germany, in 1945 after the defeat of Nazi Germany.
6
Josef Stalin's head is left in a Budapest street after a statue to the communist dictator was torn from its plinth during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
7
A statue of flower-bearing children, depicted paying homage to Josef Stalin, is seen after being damaged during the Hungarian Revolution.
8
A 15.5-meter granite monument to Josef Stalin that stood above Prague from 1955 is demolished by explosives in 1962.
9
Men beat a statue of British politician Cecil Rhodes in Zimbabwe after the African country formerly known as Rhodesia was granted independence by Britain in 1980.
10
A bronze statue of Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha is toppled after the country's anti-communist revolution, which began in 1990.
11
A landscape of Bamiyan shows the gap in the rock where Afghanistan's famous giant Buddha stood for centuries before being destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, a move the group said was "in accordance with Islamic law."
12
Iraqis tug at a toppled statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003.
13
The graffiti-covered monument of a fist depicted crushing a U.S. fighter jet that once stood in Tripoli, Libya. The famous sculpture was toppled during the 2011 civil war and is now reportedly in a Libyan museum.
14
Activists pull down what was Ukraine's largest Vladimir Lenin monument, in the eastern city of Kharkiv, after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.
15
An Islamic State militant pushes over a statue inside a museum in Mosul, northern Iraq, in 2014 or 2015. The Muslim extremists smashed several ancient treasures in the museum -- which the militants deemed "idolatrous" -- with sledgehammers and power tools.
