The Monument to the Constitution of May 3rd (Pomnik Konstytucji 3 Maja) in Wroclaw commemorates the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Constitution of May 3, 1791 — one of the first modern constitutions in the world, adopted four years before the French Directorial Constitution and two years after the American Constitution came into force. The monument honours a foundational moment in Polish legal and political history, and by extension the tradition of Polish constitutional government.
The Constitution of May 3rd was also the pretext for the Second Partition of Poland in 1793 — the neighbouring powers of Russia and Prussia used the constitutional reform as justification for territorial intervention, and within a few years Poland had ceased to exist as an independent state. The monument therefore commemorates both an achievement and a defeat: the act of political self-definition that preceded the loss of sovereignty. Wroclaw itself was a German city (Breslau) until 1945, when its German population was expelled and replaced with Poles. The decision to erect this monument here connects the city to a Polish national identity that has its own layers of historical complexity.