Karolinenplatz

The center of Karolinenplatz features a fifty-nine foot tall obelisk made of captured bronze cannons. King Ludwig the First ordered its construction in eighteen thirty-three to honor the thirty thousand Bavarian soldiers who died in Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign. The bronze, melted down from weapons seized during the French retreat, gives the dark monument its specific, heavy luster. It stands as a solitary, silent marker in the middle of a wide, open intersection, surrounded by traffic and city life.