Worlds’ largest equestrian statues

1.11. Largest in the world

Many years ago, I wrote a marketing plan under the title ‘From biggest to best’. Actually, our firm was already the biggest at that time. What followed was a heated discussion with my colleagues. Did I not think it important to be the biggest? My answer was simple. Being the best gives more job satisfaction and the chances to stay the biggest are optimal in that way.

In one way or another, people always think it important to be bigger than the rest. It is no different in the world of equestrian statues.

Standing some 40 metres tall, by far the largest equestrian statue today is the equestrian statue of Genghis Khan in Tsonjin Boldog, near Ulan Bator in Mongolia. Ten metres of this are on account of an attractive museum that the statue is built on top of. The statue is so large that I took an elevator up through the hind legs and tail of the horse. A short walk through the chest brought me to a deck on the neck of the horse, from where I enjoyed a panoramic view of the surrounding landscape. With this enormous monument, Mongolia leaves no doubt about the roots of Genghis Khan, claimed also by Inner Mongolia in China. The plan is to surround the statue with an army of 10,000 equestrian warriors. If this plan is realized, this place will be unique.

At a height of 18 metres, the statue of Jose Gervasio Artigas, known as the George Washington of Uruguay, is the second largest equestrian in the world. Despite its huge size and the material used (reinforced concrete), the statue of Artigas has a remarkable lightness.

The monument of Wilhelm I in Koblenz on the Deutsche Eck (where the rivers Rhine and Moselle meet) by Emil Hundrieser is 14 metres high and ranks third. This statue was destroyed at the end of World War II, but restored in the nineties.

There are two equestrian statues with a height of 12 metres. First, the Vittorio Emanuele statue by Enrico Chiaradia, part of a large and pompous monument in Rome, carrying nicknames like ‘the wedding cake’ and ‘the typewriter’. Second, the much disputed statue of Juan de Oñate y Salazar in front of El Paso International Airport in Texas.

Two equestrian statues have a height of nine metres: Jan Zizka by Bohumil Kafka in Prague (the Czech Republic), and Wellington in Aldershot UK. 

The last large equestrian statue that I would like to mention is the huge reconstruction of the statue of Francesco Sforza by Leonardo da Vinci in Nagoya, Japan, which is 8.3 metres high.

The question can be asked: how long will the Genghis Khan statue remain the tallest equestrian statue in the world? Not long, if the plans are realized to build an equestrian statue of Chhatrapati Shivaji (also known as Shivaji Bhonsle) on an artificial island off the coast near Mumbai. Despite debates about spending the amount of 1,900 crore (US $304 million) on a statue complex amidst the pressing priorities of education and development, the project was approved early in 2015 and is planned to be ready in 2019. The statue will be 95 metres high, taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York. The project also includes a marine aquarium, a Shivaji museum, etc. and is supposed to attract 10,000 visitors a day, transported from Mumbai to the island on two ferries.

Against the background of this ongoing ‘mine is bigger than yours’ striving, it is interesting to read in the New Indian Express of January 2015 that ‘The Gujarat government in October this year has issued a work order of 2,979 crore (US$477 million) to construct the Statue of Unity as the world’s tallest statue. The 182-metre statue of Patel will be double the size of the US Statue of Liberty and be four times that of the Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’.