I often pass by this place, but only recently noticed how the fence makes a curved turn, as if someone decided to round the corner or cut out a round patch. The answer came to me while I was searching for information online. One link led to another, and by solving one minor question, I immediately found new ones, until I noticed it was already three in the morning.

On the map from the early 20th century, there is a small circular area marked with a monument in the center. It was erected in honor of the suppression of the November Uprising, specifically in memory of the battle of Grochów. In February 1831, a few kilometers from here, Polish troops held back the advance of Count Dibich-Zabalkansky's corps. After a prolonged battle, the Russians retreated, temporarily abandoning the assault on Warsaw, but a few months later they captured the city, this time attacking from the west.

The monument was built according to a standard design. An almost identical one stands in Borodino; perhaps the Polish uprising was considered a kind of continuation of the Napoleonic campaign. In the book by art historian Pyotr Pashkevich, it is stated:

These were cast-iron obelisks with domes resembling church towers (...) an example of the fusion of state and Church, embodying the Nicholas formula: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality.

The black iron tower, a bell tower from which no sound was heard, disappeared during World War I, in 1916 or 1917. If cannons were cast from iron, then the circle closed, and the monument to the fallen became the cause of new victims.

Three generations of Warsaw residents lived under the Romanov state. For a hundred years, from the Congress of Vienna to World War I, Warsaw was part of Russia. This was an important century in the city's history, an era of industrial revolution, capitalism, migrations, two uprisings, and one coup.

I found a photograph of the monument at Grochów in the Military Encyclopedia of Sytin from 1911-1915. The snapshot illustrated the article "Warsaw."

The monument was destroyed by the Poles in the early 1920s.