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The Broken Ring -- a monument to the breach of the Blockade of Leningrad

Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating and important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. Cities that are planned such as Washington D.C. and Brasília are often built around monuments. The Washington Monument's location (and vertical geometry, though not physical detail) was conceived to help organize public space in the city before it was ever connected with George Washington. Older cities have monuments placed at locations that are already important or are sometimes redesigned to focus on one. As Shelley suggested in his famous poem "Ozymandias" ("Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"), the purpose of monuments is very often to impress or awe. In English the word "monumental" is often used in reference to something of extraordinary size and power.

Functional structures made notable by their age, size or historic significance can also be regarded as monuments. This can happen because of great age and size, as in the case of the Great Wall of China, or because an event of great import occurred there such as the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France.

Monuments are also often designed to convey historical or political information. They can be used to reinforce the primacy of contemporary political power, such as the column of Trajan or the numerous statues of Lenin in the Soviet Union. More benignly they can be used to educate the populace about important events or figures from the past. Monuments also serve as demarcators of public spaces.

Most large monuments are built by governments, but smaller ones are still often built by individuals.

Monuments have been created for thousands of years, and they are often the most durable and famous symbols of ancient civilizations. The Egyptian Pyramids, the GreekAncient Greece is the term used to describe the Greek-speaking world in ancient times. It refers not only to the territory of the present Greek state, but also to those areas settled in ancient times by Greeks: Cyprus, the Aegean coast of Turkey (then kno ParthenonThe Parthenon ( Greek: Παρθενων, the Temple of Athena the Virgin is the most famous surviving building of Ancient Greece and one of the most famous buildings in the world. The building has stood atop the Acropolis of, and the MoaiMoai are monolithic stone statues on Easter Island. The more than 600 known Moais are distributed around the entire island. Most of the moai were carved out of the rock at Rano Raraku, where nearly 400 more moai remain in various stages of completion. of Easter IslandEaster Island ( Polynesian: Rapa Nui ("Great Rapa"), Spanish: Isla de Pascua is an island in the south Pacific Ocean belonging to Chile. Administratively it is a province of the Chilean region of Valparaiso, although it is located 3,515 km (2,185 miles) w have become symbols of their civilizations. In more recent times, monumental structures such as the Statue of LibertyLiberty Enlightening the World commonly known as the Statue of Liberty is a statue that stands at the mouth of the Hudson River in the harbor of New York City as a welcome to all: returning Americans, visitors, and immigrants alike. The sculptor was Frede and Eiffel TowerThe Eiffel Tower French: La tour Eiffel is the most recognizable landmark in Paris and is known worldwide as a symbol of France. Named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, it is a premier tourist destination, with over 5. 5 million visitors per year. The n have become iconic emblems of modern nation-states. The term monumentality relates to the symbolic status and physical presence of a monument.

Until relatively recently, it was customary for archaeologists to study large monuments and pay less attention to the everyday lives of the societies that created them. New ideas about what constitutes the archaeological record have revealed that certain legislative and theoretical approaches to the subject are too focused on earlier definitions of monuments. An example has been the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly's Scheduled Ancient Monument laws.