Independence Monument, Tulcea

The Independence Monument stands on Colnicul Horei, today Monument Hill, in the north-eastern part of the city of Tulcea, above the old centre and the Danube. It is an obelisk dedicated to the Romanian army in the War of Independence of 1877 and 1878, after which Dobruja returned to Romania. The foundation stone was laid in 1879 in the presence of Prince Carol I. The List of Historic Monuments records the stages 1879, 1899-1904, 1935 and 1977. The commission went to the sculptor Gheorghe (Giorgio) Vasilescu, who died in 1898 and for whom the Tulcea monument was his last work; Giorgio Vasilescu and Constantin Bălăcescu are listed as its sculptors. According to Professor Nicolae Ariton (Tulcea Teachers' Resource Centre), the monument cost 100,000 lei and had a marble obelisk and two bronze statues, each 4 m tall, cast in Italy. Medals struck in 1899 by the engraver Mauriciu Carniol the Younger show the obelisk flanked by an eagle and a dorobanț (Romanian infantryman), with the legend "Homage to the great captain, homage to the Romanian army. The country and the grateful people of Dobruja". The centenary medal of 1977 shows the restored monument, again with the eagle and the dorobanț. The monument stands in the park on the hill, which overlooks the city and the Danube. The same hill holds the ruins of the ancient fortress of Aegyssus and ICEM Tulcea's Museum of History and Archaeology. It is reached on foot from the city centre, by the steps that climb the hill. It is a historic monument of national importance, in the category of public memorials, LMI code TL-III-m-A-06040. Did you know that, according to the newspaper "Alarma Dobrogei" of 27 July 1897, the top of the hill was occupied by the windmill of an old local man, Vasile Nicolaeff, who refused to give up the land for the monument? The paper writes that on 5 July 1897 the mayor, Mircea Petrescu, at the head of a crowd, pulled the mill down. Professor Nicolae Ariton, who calls Nicolaeff "the Don Quixote of Tulcea", notes that two other versions of the episode circulate and that the paper was hostile to the prefect of the time, Ion Nenițescu.