The photo for this postcard was taken from Siebenbürgerstrasse (Str. Stefan cel Mare, vul. Holovna) towards Rathausstrasse (Str. Regina Maria, vul. Tscherwonoarmijska).
In the front it shows the Kriegerdenkmal (Solder’s monument), the foundation stone for which was laid in April 1901. The monument was put up in December 1902 in occasion of the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the infantry regiment Erzherzog Eugen Nr.41 which was stationed in Chernivtsi exclusively since 1882. Its last commander before the First World War was Archduke Eugen. The monument consisted of a socle and an obelisk with an eagle on the top. The socle has an iscription in German, Romanian and Ukrainian which says: “The grateful Bukovina, for the members of the infantry regiment Archduke Eugen Nr. 41 who fell on the fields of honour.” The monument was taken down in 1949. The socle survived and was brought back to its historic location in the 1990s.
The background shows fashionable appartment buildings in the Rathausstrasse and, to the right, the Palace Hotel. The hotel was one of the best in town until the Second World War. It used to be a two storied building named Hotel Metropol and was raised by two stories and renamed Palace after 1926. After the second World War the Hotel was renamed “Kiev” and got back its traditional name “Palace” only in 2008. The house left to the hotel belonged to the religious community of Lipovanians or Old Believers, orthodox Christians who split from the Russian church in the 17th c. Helmut Kusdat
