Wroclaw, Poland – the city of charming dwarfs

Dwarfs are "in stories for children, creatures like little men with magical powers" (Cambridge Dictionary). But what are over 300 of these mystical creatures doing in the Polish city of Wroclaw?

To better understand what these gnomes actually represent, we should go about 30 years back in history.

After WWII, an authoritarian regime was established in Poland under the stern eye of Soviet communists. In the 1980s, an opposition movement called Solidarity began to gather momentum. Part of this resistance was the so-called Orange Alternative, an underground movement that found a way to protest peacefully against the regime. They managed to do that with their intelligent humor and absurdity; they organized street gatherings and painted graffiti gnomes on the spots where other anti-government slogans had been painted over. The dwarf with the orange hat holding a flower became a symbol of the movement.


The last remaining Orange Alternative Dwarf in Warsaw/ Wikipedia