Monument to defenders of Smolensk on the August 4-5, 1812, military engagement

An architect Antonio Adamini erected a monument in 1841 at the imperial order of Emperor Nicholas I. In 1856, two French guns were found here during construction works on digging a foundation for a new building of university preparatory school for boys. In 1873 these guns were mounted at the sides of the monument at the carriages, specially cast for it at the Bryansk Arsenal. During 1919—1928 years, Bolshevik press operator Smirnov, chairman of the Provincial Committee of Komsomol E. F. Garabuda, public servant of the People's Commissariat for Labor of the USSR V. Z. Sobolev were all buried at the monument, and the remains of the Secretary of the Smolensk Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (B) G. I. Payterov, who died in 1942 in Dorogobuzhsky District, were moved here in the 1970s. Consequently, some kind of necropolis of fighters of the revolution formed at the monument. After the war, the square was landscaped, and it has evolved into one of park corners with a grandiose monument on its central alley.