The Candle Demonstration, sometimes referred to as the Candle Protest or Bratislava Good Friday, was a peaceful demonstration by thousands of citizens, most of whom held burning candles, demanding religious and civil rights and freedoms in socialist Czechoslovakia. It took place on 25 March 1988 at Hviezdoslav Square in Bratislava, and was met by a harsh crackdown by the then Public Security and State Security forces that violated the participants’ civil rights and breached internationally recognised principles. The demonstration, organised by what was known as the secret or underground church, is now considered one of the most important acts of civil resistance against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and marked the beginning of the definitive fall of the regime in Slovakia. The 25th of March has since become the country’s Struggle for Human Rights Day. 

On 25 March 2000, a monument to the event was unveiled in front of the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (popularly known as Notre Dame) that "did not quite match the scale and purpose of the event". The Hlbiny Civic Association therefore decided to erect a new monument on the same site to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Candle Demonstration. 

The area on which believers gathered on 25 March 1988, land that belongs to the Canonesses of Saint Augustine of the Notre-Dame Congregation, is today marked by a triangular tarmacked space. Upon it lies a stone-clad platform shaped as an equilateral triangle, a symbol of God, with one of its vertices pointing towards the church. Near the centre of the platform stands a rough pale stone sculpted as a truncated sphere. Its flat surface, coated with shiny dark stone, faces the sky. The surface features five variously sized circular glass coverings with lighting fixtures, and the plane of its cut is accentuated by a parallel groove running below its edge. The beams that shine from the monument at night evoke the candles held by demonstrators in 1988. The side of the structure nearest the church bears a cylindrical hole – probably a technical element. 

Parallel to the church façade, a dedication is engraved in large white capital letters on the platform surface: 

"IN HONOR OF THE CANDLE DEMONSTRATION OF 25 MARCH 1988". 

The artist Patrik Kovačovský, creator of the work, accented the area around the inscription with dark-coloured stone cladding. The same stone is used at the tip nearest the church, where the logo of an unidentified institution is engraved and highlighted in white, as is the logo of a German organisation with the text: 

„ADALBERT-STIFTUNG 

KREFELD“. 

The non-figurative monument in abstract-symbolic expression was selected from a competition of five designs. It is connected to the surrounding paved surfaces by a stone walkway oriented perpendicular to the church façade. 

Ceremonial unveiling of the work took place on 25 March 2008.

PB

Research status as of 16. 06. 2023.