Syrenka of Warsaw

This mermaid statue was made in bronzed tin by Konstanty Hegel in 1855.  The above statue is a cast from the original, placed in Warsaw’s Old Town Market square.  The square is one of the city’s top tourist attractions.   There are many representations of the Syrenka throughout the city, including another mermaid statue near the River Vistula.

There are different stories of how the mermaid came to be the city’s protector.

One story has it that the Syrenka, whose name was Melusina, is the sister of the famous mermaid in Copenhagen. One of the sisters swam up to the Danish straits and stayed there. The other sister swam to Poland and up the Vistula River, right to where the Old Town Market is today. She liked it and stayed and was popular with the people there for her singing.

When she was caught and held prisoner by a man wanting to profit by her, she was freed by the local people. In gratitude she promised to protect the people if they were ever in danger.

The city's emblem

Tracing the history of the city’s coat of arms, it started out in 1390 as a dragon with a male human head, holding a shield and a sword. A 1459 seal shows a feminine figure with a fishtail. Eventually in 1622 the first clear mermaid appears.

History of the statue

Konstanty Hegel (1799–1876), a professor at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, designed the Syrenka in 1855. It was cast in bronzed tin at Karol Juliusz Minter's Warsaw foundry and installed on an artificial rock in a fountain on the site of the demolished town hall, as part of the city's first modern water supply. The Museum of Warsaw describes her as holding 'a sword raised above her head and a round shield.'

Moves and replacement

The statue was moved to Solec Street around 1929, damaged in the Second World War and later restored, and returned to the Old Town Market Square around 2000. After repeated vandalism and wear, the original went to the Museum of Warsaw in 2008. A copy cast at the Jacek Guzera foundry near Kielce stands in the square today.

In this statue, the Syrenka is a two-tailed mermaid, with a tail on each “leg”. Warsaw is just one of the cities with mermaids as their icon.

Other Syrenkas

Ludwika Nitschowa's bronze Syrenka on Wybrzeże Kościuszkowskie was erected in 1939. Poet and ethnography student Krystyna Krahelska modelled for it; she was killed in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944.