Italo Balbo was an Italian fascist General who served as Mussolini’s Marshal of the Air Force andthen as Governor of Libya. While being celebrated for his aerial feats, he remains a controversialfigure as the Governor of Libya. In 1933, the Illinois monument was erected after his transatlanticflight to Chicago to… Read More
The Republic of Croatia Square in Zagreb has been renamed numerous times since the 20th century. Although its geographical place name sometimes referred to it, it was most well-known as the Square of Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the leader of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After Croatia’s independence in… Read More
In 1941, Japan occupied Malaysia in the context of World War II. That same year, they built a stone monument in Alor Setar to honour three Japanese soldiers who were killed while securing the city’s bridge to cut off Allied troops. The restoration of the memorial in 2019, officiated by… Read More
The Indro Montanelli statue in Milan was built in 2006 by the then-mayor Gabriele Albertini. Initially, criticism arose for the funeral aesthetic and impression of the statue; some described it as a ‘funerary mummification.’ However, in the last years, it has been contested for Montanelli’s link to colonialism, fascism and… Read More
The Green Bridge is located in the city centre of Vilnius, Lithuania, and since its rebuilding following the Second World War, it was decorated with four groups of statues created by multiple Lithuanian artists in the Socialist realism style. Discussions about the statues split Lithuanian society when some groups advocated… Read More
On February 15, 2020, work began on re-erecting the Marian Column Monument in Prague, which had been torn down on November 3, 1918. The column had stood in Old Town Square for more than 250 years before becoming the focus of tensions between religious and nationalist groups. Proponents of its… Read More
The Brotherhood in Arms monument was the first post-Second World War monument placed in Warsaw in Vilnius Square. The public contestation of the monument began after Poland gained independence in 1989, although grievances against it might have been aired within opposition circles in prior years, too. After the exit of… Read More
The Matilda Newport Monument in Monrovia, Liberia, commemorates the victory of American free Black settlers over the indigenous population in battle in 1822. The protagonist of the story, Matilda Newport, is credited with lighting a cannon that resulted in the defeat of the native people. The monument has stood in… Read More
The Nanjing Memorial Hall commemorating the six weeks of Japanese occupation in the Sino-Japanese War remains a key point of contention in Sino-Japanese relations. This case study explores how contested historical events can lead to the construction of national identities and the impact and tension this can cause in spaces… Read More
In the years after the Confederate States of America (often referred to as the ‘Confederacy’) lost the American Civil War in 1865, several groups established memorials to Confederate leaders across the South. Five Confederate statues were erected on Monument Avenue in Richmond, once the capital of the Confederacy and the… Read More
Omarska Concentration Camp in Prijedor is notorious for being the site of the 1992 PrijedorMassacre during the Bosnian War; it featured prominently in several trials for the perpetrationof international crimes undertaken by the International Criminal Tribunal of the FormerYugoslavia. Since 2004, numerous attempts at commemoration for the victims of the… Read More
On February 27, 2016, several Czech citizens started a petition to rename Prague’s Under the Chestnuts Square, the site of Russia’s Embassy in the Czech Republic, in honour of the murdered Kremlin critic, Boris Nemtsov. The Prague City Council finalised the renaming on February 27, 2020. In response, the Russian… Read More