Architecture
The architect, Sir Herbert Baker, allegedly modelled the memorial after the Greek temple at Segesta although it is actually closer to the temple of Pergamon in design. It consists of a massive staircase with 49 steps (one for each year of Rhodes's life) leading from a semi-circular terrace up to a rectangular U-shaped monument formed of pillars. The memorial is built of Cape granite quarried on Table Mountain.
At the bottom of the steps is a bronze statue of a horseman, Energy by George Frederic Watts. Eight bronze lions by John Macallan Swan flank the steps leading up to the memorial, with a bust of Rhodes (also by JM Swan). The inscription on the monument is "To the spirit and life work of Cecil John Rhodes who loved and served South Africa." Inscribed below the bust of Rhodes are the last four lines of the last stanza from the 1902 poem Burial by Rudyard Kipling in honour of Rhodes:
- The immense and brooding spirit still
- Shall quicken and control.
- Living he was the land, and dead,
- His soul shall be her soul!
The monument was completed and dedicated in 1912. An alternative memorial to him never materialised: a massive "colossus of Rhodes" statue overlooking Cape Town from the summit of Lion's Head, rather like the statue of Christ overlooking Rio de Janeiro.
Read more about this topic: Rhodes Memorial
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