The monument to Jadwiga, the Queen of Poland, in the village of Mykulychyn is one of the evidences of rapid development of tourism on the territory of the Carpathian National Nature Park in the interwar period and popularity of this region with tourists. You can’t miss this attraction, moving through the central part of the village.
Jadwiga was the patroness of students. According to the Polish Encyclopedia, she was the daughter of Louis the Great and the wife of Władysław Jagiełło. In 1387, the queen annexed Galician lands to Poland. Jadwiga also contributed to the restoration of the Kraków Academy.
The monument was erected in 1938 in the yard of the academic sanatorium in Mykulychyn. The sculpture is placed on a high pedestal. The queen is holding a model of the Kraków Jagiellonian University in her left hand. The right hand of the sculpture (in which, according to some reports, there was a cup, according to others ‒ a crucifix) was destroyed by a Red Army soldier in 1945.
Students and professors of the University of Lviv, the Lviv Polytechnic National University, as well as the Kraków Jagiellonian University used to stay in the sanatorium of the Lviv Academic Schools. Unfortunately, during the World War Two, the building was hit by a shell, as the front line passed near the sanatorium. After the war, the building was completely destroyed.
In the times of the Soviet regime, the monument was saved by an ordinary local teacher, Anna Motruk, who convinced the communist authorities that it was not the noble Queen Jadwiga, but the ancient Greek goddess of beauty and love, Aphrodite. As the sculpture was located near the Ivano-Frankivsk ‒ Rakhiv highway, Anna Motruk surrounded it with tall trees. In the times of independent Ukraine, when there was no need to hide Jadwiga, the trees were cut down. Nowadays, this unique monument attracts attention of hundreds of tourists who are pleased to admire the patroness of students.
Based on the materials by Svitlana Flys, the ethnographer
