The President of the United States, Donald Trump, plans to install a statue of Christopher Columbus in the White House gardens, according to The Washington Post. The initiative is part of the presidential complex’s remodeling plans and the leader’s declared willingness to publicly vindicate the figure of the Genoese navigator.
Planned Location and Origin of the Statue
According to the U.S. newspaper, the statue would be located on the south side of the White House grounds, near E Street and north of the area known as the Ellipse, although sources warn that the project could still undergo modifications.
The sculpture is a reconstruction of a Christopher Columbus statue that was inaugurated in Baltimore during Ronald Reagan’s presidency and was toppled and thrown into the city’s harbor in 2020, in the context of protests that affected numerous historical monuments in various U.S. cities.
An Initiative Driven by the Italian-American Community
A group of Italian-American businessmen and politicians, in collaboration with local sculptors, recovered the remains of the destroyed statue and promoted its reconstruction with financial support from charitable organizations and federal funds.
Bill Martin, an Italian-American businessman involved in the recovery and restoration process of the sculpture, explained to the newspaper that the statue will be transported in the coming weeks from a warehouse on Maryland’s eastern shore for delivery to Trump.
Christopher Columbus and the Contemporary Debate
Christopher Columbus, protagonist of the 1492 voyage that opened the American continent to the European world and initiated a historical process of universal scope, has been the subject in recent years of a critical review—the black legend—in all of Hispanoamerica and the United States. In several states, the traditional Columbus Day has been replaced by the so-called Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a decision backed by then-President Joe Biden in 2021.
Trump, on the contrary, made the defense of Columbus Day one of the elements of his political discourse. In October, he signed a presidential proclamation in which he described the navigator as “the original American hero” and reaffirmed the official commemoration of the holiday.
A Gesture with Historical and Cultural Reach
The president emphasized on several occasions the symbolic value of this decision for the Italian-American community, which he explicitly encouraged to remember it in the electoral sphere. The initiative also occurs in a broader context of the restitution of historical monuments removed during the 2020 protests.