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The thematic tour of Wrocław’s monuments during the Lower Silesian Festival of Architecture is intended to follow this year’s motto, i.e. “Space for Beauty”. Beyond doubt, the urban structure, which is made up of a network of streets and squares filled with buildings and architectural forms that are often schematically arranged as frontages and blocks, does need to contain high-quality common spaces. It is precisely these spaces, in the form of parks, gardens, squares, pavements, etc., that determine the identity of a city to the same degree as its dwellers. In order to make it possible for a city and its inhabitants to establish dialogue, the common spaces must be filled up with the right architectural elements that will contribute to the creation of a “cultural territory”. Monuments and statues facilitate this process; possibly, they are an indispensable and crucial element in these spaces because of their long-lasting quality, which increases as they take on the noble patina of age. Their rank, form and content make it easier to get accustomed to an urban environment by automatically making it more acceptable and friendly. Monuments are an extremely important and integral element of the cityscape. What differs them from other pieces of “street furniture” is their prestige, which also captures the changing styles, fashions, materials and technologies. Last but not least, monuments symbolise national identity, or, to put it more broadly – human civilisation. Whether truly monumental or modest and formally reserved, monuments correspond with the surrounding architecture and, in keeping with the principle of addition, enrich it. These features of monuments fulfil their main function, which is to commemorate. The very word “monument” is derived from the Latin moneo, monere, which means “to remind” – to remind of a person, event, place, idea, to remind of the past time and past artists. Monuments typically assume the form of a sculpture or an architectural-sculptural work; in order for them to last, they must have the proper artistic form, one that would either differentiate them from the surroundings in the right, noble way, or enable them to symbiotically correspond with and become integrated in the surroundings.
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