A sleeping lion faithfully guards the remains of Otto’s retinue

The Bavarian lion is a sculpture of outstanding complexity and one of the most important monuments of the 19th century in Greece.

Between the Church of All Saints in Nafplion and the current city cemetery, there is a rare sculptural monument known as the Bavarian Lion, dating from 1840 to 1841. The monument is located on Michael Yatrou Street.

The lion, carved into the rock on a monumental scale, is depicted sleeping. The sculptor of this beautiful work of art is the German Christian Siegel, who was the first professor of sculpture at the Athens Polytechnic Institute. The model for Siegel’s work was the Lion of Lucerne by the famous Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

Under the Bavarian lion, an inscription in German is carved in the rock, which says that the monument was commissioned by the Bavarian king Louis, father of the first king of the Greeks, Otto, in memory of the Bavarian soldiers who belonged to the retinue and died of a typhus epidemic in Nafplio in 1833 and 1834.

The Bavarians were buried in the nearby Αγίων Πάντων cemetery, in the area northeast of Evangelistria, which became known as “Bavarian graves”. Later, the remains were placed in the crypt of the Catholic Church of Nafplion.

Today, the square in front of the Bavarian Lion has turned into a small park with benches.