Strakonice Square will be adorned with a large bronze statue of a bagpiper

Strakonice - Strakonice will have its first statue of a bagpiper, which is one of the symbols of the city. The two-meter-high bronze sculpture, costing half a million crowns, will stand in the center of the newly opened roundabout at the renovated Great Square starting Tuesday. The idea to create the statue came from the children's council, which consists of students from the fifth to ninth grades of Strakonice elementary schools, Věra Samková from the city office's development department told ČTK today.
    The bronze statue of the bagpiper will be officially unveiled on Tuesday afternoon. Its author is Strakonice's academic painter Jiří Kubelka. "We don't have any larger statue in the city, and it seemed symbolic that the first one could be the bagpiper, which belongs to Strakonice," Samková said. According to her, in the future, the city should be adorned with more sculptures.
    The decision to make the bagpiper the first sculpture was made by the Strakonice children's council. It has been functioning for ten years and is composed of 21 students from the second level of elementary schools. "It has the same number of members as the city council," Samková noted.
    The costs of the statue, which amounted to nearly half a million crowns, were covered by the city by 15 percent. For the remainder of the amount, the town hall received a grant from the Integrated Operational Program of the EU.
    The bronze bagpiper will thus be another element in the reconstruction of the Great Square. The main reconstruction lasted two years and was completed two weeks ago. The costs of the square's reconstruction amounted to 82 million crowns, and the city received 43 million crowns from European funds for it. The reconstruction transformed an area of more than 16,000 square meters. Alongside the new roundabout, sidewalks, lighting, benches, and engineering networks have been created.