Taras Shevchenko, Memorial statue in Shevchenko Park, Ukraine

The Taras Shevchenko Monument is a bronze standing figure with the head tilted slightly forward, hands clasped behind the back and a coat hanging over the left forearm. It stands in Shevchenko Park opposite the Red Building of Kyiv University, on the pedestal of a monument to Nicholas I that the Bolsheviks dismantled in 1920 and melted down at the Arsenal works.

The monument was unveiled in 1939, replacing an earlier memorial dedicated to a Russian tsar. This change reflected how the city's priorities and national identity were shifting at that time.

The monument's site was long contested: Kyiv's council offered Karavayeva Square instead, and mayor Ipolyt Dyakov said the "Cavalier" Shevchenko had to yield to the "Lady", Princess Olga. Yevhen Chykanenko argued Shevchenko should wear the folk coat and hat he favoured in photographs. The 1939 unveiling marked the 125th anniversary of his birth.

The statue is located at the northern edge of the park and is easily reached by public transportation from central Kyiv. The site is accessible on foot and there are several pathways to reach it from different parts of the park.

The pedestal was not built for Shevchenko: it once carried a monument to Tsar Nicholas I, founder of Kyiv's Imperial University of St Vladimir. The Bolsheviks dismantled that statue in 1920 and melted it down at the Arsenal factory, and the poet later took the tsar's place on the same base.