Mamayev Kurgan
— the hill the battle was fought for.
Not only on a wall.
“The hill above Volgograd that the Battle of Stalingrad was fought for, metre by metre, through the winter of 1942. The Motherland Calls rises 85 metres at the summit, her sword raised, among the tallest statues in the world. A mass grave at the foot of the hill holds the bones of more than 30,000 Red Army soldiers.
Mamayev Kurgan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Mamayev Kurgan is a hill on the right bank of the Volga in Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, in southern Russia. It rises about 102 metres above the river. Between September 1942 and January 1943 the hill changed hands more than a dozen times during the Battle of Stalingrad and was so churned by shelling that no grass grew for years after the war. The memorial complex was designed by the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and the architect Yakov Belopolsky and opened on 15 October 1967.
The complex climbs the hill in a sequence of stations: an avenue of poplars, the Square of Standfast, the ruined walls with bas-reliefs of soldiers, the Hall of Military Glory ringed by a mosaic banner of fallen names, the Square of Sorrow with a mourning mother and a still pool. At the summit stands The Motherland Calls, 85 metres from base to sword tip, weighing about 8,000 tonnes in pre-stressed reinforced concrete. A mass grave at the foot of the hill holds the remains of more than 30,000 Red Army soldiers.
On 9 May the complex draws the largest crowd of the year for Victory Day. An eternal flame burns inside the Hall of Military Glory. An honour guard turns at the top of every hour. On 2 February the city marks the anniversary of the German surrender in 1943, the end of the battle. The hill is open through the year. The steepest of the ascending staircases has 200 steps, one for each day of the battle. Snow holds the summit through January and February.