The Statue of Liberty on Gellért Hill is one of the symbols of Budapest, with a woman holding a palm branch in her raised hand. The statue was created by Zsigmond Strobl Kisfaludi in 1947. The palm branch is a symbol of peace and victory. The official name of the original composition, which included several smaller statues, was the Liberation Monument, erected to commemorate the Soviet army's defeat of the German army in Budapest. After the fall of the socialist regime and the reassessment of the Soviet liberation, the sculpture complex was slightly modified and references to the Soviets, such as the 4 m high statue of a Soviet soldier standing in the foreground of the sculpture (holding a PPS-41 submachine gun), were removed. The statue of the soldier had already been demolished in 1956, but was replaced after the fall of the revolution and finally moved to the Memento Park in 1992. The inscription on the statue's pedestal was also changed, giving a new meaning to one of Budapest's most visible landmarks. Soon after its installation, the statue of a woman symbolising freedom became one of the city's most important landmarks.
The statue itself is 14 metres tall, rising 40 metres with its pedestal to a height of 40 metres above the 235-metre-high Gellért Hill.
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