The Metronome: Where Stalin Stood for Seven Years
Why is it significant?
Stand at the foot of the giant metronome and watch its arm swing slowly, ticking off time above the city. Then look at what it stands on: a colossal platform of stone, with stairways and terraces, far too big for a metronome. That is because it was built for someone else... Stalin.
Key Facts
| Place | The Metronome: Where Stalin Stood for Seven Years |
|---|---|
| Address | Letenské sady, 170 00 Praha 7, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.09470, 14.41590 |
| Part of Walk | Letná & Holešovice: Prague's Hidden North Bank, from Stalin's Ghost to the Royal Game Park |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand at the foot of the giant metronome and watch its arm swing slowly, ticking off time above the city. Then look at what it stands on: a colossal platform of stone, with stairways and terraces, far too big for a metronome. That is because it was built for someone else... Stalin.
On 1 May 1955, the largest group statue in Europe was unveiled here. Joseph Stalin in granite, about fifteen metres high, led a line of Czech and Soviet figures, workers, soldiers and scientists, towards a shining future. From the Old Town it dominated the skyline. Praguers, who have a gift for this kind of thing, soon gave it a nickname: the queue for meat, because that is exactly what it looked like, a line of people standing patiently behind the man at the front.
The story of its sculptor is darker. Otakar Švec won the competition and then had to live with it. Weeks before the unveiling he took his own life, and never saw the work finished. By then Stalin himself had been dead for two years. In 1956 Khrushchev denounced him, and the monument became an embarrassment nobody knew how to remove. In 1962 it was finally blown up, behind fences, in a series of explosions, with the city told as little as possible.
For decades the plinth stood empty. Then came its strange afterlife. After the Velvet Revolution a pirate station calling itself Radio Stalin broadcast from the cellars beneath it. In 1991 the artist Vratislav Novák set up this metronome, a reminder that time passes, even for dictators. And in 1996 a giant statue of Michael Jackson briefly stood on the pedestal to promote his concert in Prague.
Today the plateau belongs to skateboarders, students with a bottle of wine and couples watching the sunset over the bridges. It may be the most cheerful spot in Prague built on the foundations of the grimmest. Now walk north, away from the river, through the trees to the edge of a huge open field.