Mitrovica, Kosovo

Mitrovica Miners Monument

Two distorted Romanesque columns hold aloft a mine cart in honor of laborers who died during WWII.

Standing in the form of some lost Roman addition to Stonehenge, Bogdan Bogdanović’s huge concrete monument in the town of Mitrovica is actually an homage to the community’s roots and to those who were lost during the fighting of World War II.

Located atop a promontory known as Miner’s Hill, Bogdanović’s stark memorial speaks to the area’s rich history of, unsurprisingly, mining. The work is another in a long line of bleak concrete memorials that Bogdanović has created across Eastern Europe to remember those who died fighting German forces. The Mitrovica monument is comprised of two fluted columns that taper near the top to create a bit of forced perspective for those viewing the work from the ground. Perched atop the spires is the curved belly of a concrete mine cart replica that speaks directly to the history of the place. The monument was specifically dedicated to the Serbian and Albanian fighters from the area, many of whom worked as miners.

As with many of the cement monuments that still litter Eastern Europe and Western Russia, the meaning behind the Mitrovica miner’s monument is lost both on many of the visitors and on many of the locals to whom it is simply becoming an aging stone curiosity much like the famous henge that inspired it.