Bem’s Fort and the mausoleum of the battle of Ostrołęka. Memory of place – place of memory

Marcin Górski, Grzegorz Rytel

doi:10.5277/arc160107

Abstract

Nowadays the site of the battle which was fought at Ostrołęka on the 26th of May 1831 constitutes a kind of a palimpsest of the written in space events that took place within the past 180 years. In the article the subsequent operations taken in the site of battles, in the context of changeable historical determinants, have been presented. The following changes in the countryside, starting from placing tiny elements commemorating both fighting parties, through the building of the fort, up to the complex over eighty-year long operations related to the construction of the mausoleum – all of them have been described in the article. The traces of some events faded as a result of subsequent operations, some others create together the present space of the site. All of them belong to the memory of place, tended by Ostrołęka inhabitants, the site which constitutes a significant element of the historical heritage, which results in creating the local identity.