On the east side of the road.

The site includes a 3.4-meter-high bronze statue of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. This monument was originally erected to honor President Wilson's role in the independence of Czechoslovakia after World War I, and it also recognizes the close and lasting ties between the United States and the Czech Republic.

On 4 July 1928, a bronze statue of Wilson by the Czech-born American sculptor Albín Poláek was erected in Vrchlický Gardens next to Pragues main train station. The larger-than-life figure hands outstretched in a gesture of benediction stood on a 5.8-meter plinth bearing the presidents name and the legend The world must be made safe for democracy, a line from Wilsons 1917 declaration of war against Germany.

In 1941, four days after the 7 December attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, German Reichsprotektor SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich ordered the destruction of the statue, which was subsequently melted down for scrap metal.

The end of the Second World War saw the Prague Main Train Station named after Wilson, and Jan Masaryk, son of former President Tomá Garrigue Masaryk and Czech diplomat who served as the Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia during 1940-1948, emplaced a plaque at the original memorial site in 1946 with the words: The monument was destroyed by the Germans in 1941 and will be re-erected by Americans of Czech descent in the United States of America. This monument was torn down during the Soviet-supported Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in February 1948.

As part of a general reconfiguration of Vrchlický Gardens which started in 2006, the architectural team of Václav Frýdecký, Michal Blaek and Daniel Talavera erected a copy of the original statue, supported by the City of Prague, the Metropolitan District of Prague 1, and American Friends of the Czech Republic, an American foundation. The new statue was unveiled on 5 October 2011, in the presence of the Czech president Václav Klaus, his predecessor Václav Havel, then-U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic Norman Eisen, and Madeleine Albright, the Czech-born former US Secretary of State.

Source of information: pragitecture.eu, www.voanews.com, www.businessinsider.com, en.wikipedia.org

Source of photos: googlemaps, commons.wikimedia.org

Monument pedestal text:

WOODROW WILSON

THE WORLD MUST BE MADE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY

SVT MUSÍ BÝT ZABEZPEN PRO DEMOKRACII

Monument base text: