The Statue of Ovid, Constanța

The Statue of Ovid is the first statuary monument erected in Constanța after Dobrogea came under Romanian administration in 1878. It was the initiative of the county's first prefect, Remus N. Opreanu, who established a "Committee for the Statue of Ovid". The statue was created in 1884 by Italian sculptor Ettore Ferrari — also the author of the statue of Abraham Lincoln in New York, the monument to Garibaldi in Rovigo, and the statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome. Due to a lack of funds, the work sat for three years in a warehouse in Cernavodă before being inaugurated in August 1887, at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister D.A. Sturdza, a delegation from Sulmona (the poet's birthplace in Italy), and press representatives from across the country. Cast in bronze and standing 2.60 m tall, the statue depicts Ovid in a meditative pose, with his head bowed and resting on his right hand — which originally held a stylus, now lost — and a volumen (a rolled manuscript) in his left hand. The white marble pedestal bears a plaque inscribed with a stanza from the Tristia, the writings composed by Ovid during his exile at Tomis. Initially positioned facing north, the statue was moved to its current location in 1921, at the time of the construction of the City Hall Palace — a building that today houses the Muzeul Național de Istorie și Arheologie Constanța. During the German-Bulgarian occupation of 1916–1918, Bulgarian soldiers toppled the statue from its pedestal with the intention of taking it to Bulgaria as war spoils; it was saved through the intervention of German officers and restored to its pedestal with the help of wooden scaffolding and pulleys. An identical replica was installed in 1925 in Sulmona, Italy, the poet's birthplace. The statue stands at the confluence of the former agora of ancient Tomis and the port area, in front of the MINAC building.