This website (
visit link) provides much of the info:
"Among Kraków’s most well-known landmarks, this sculpture in the western corner of the market square is a popular meeting place and at some point serves as a photographic backdrop for almost every tourist who visits the city. Affectionately referred to as ‘The Head’, the bronze body part’s official title is ‘Eros Bendato’ (Eros Bound) and is the work of Polish artist Igor Mitoraj (1944 - 2014). A student of Tadeusz Kantor at the Kraków School of Art, an exhibition of 14 of Mitoraj’s monumental works dressed the Rynek from Oct 17, 2003 to Jan 25, 2004, during which the artist gifted this work to the city, sparking controversy over what to do with it. Initially, the sculpture was designated for the square in front of Galeria Krakowska, but the artist was indignant about having his work in front of a commercial building. Despite protest from historians and many locals, the sculpture eventually found its current place near the Town Hall Tower, where it has become an unexpected tourist attraction. In summer, children can be seen crawling all over the hollow edifice, sticking their heads and limbs through the eyeholes for camera-snapping parents, though winter too often finds it profaned with trash and foul-smelling liquids. Fans of Mitoraj’s work will find another of his large sculptures – titled ‘Luci di Nara’ - adorning the charming courtyard of Collegium Luridicum (ul. Grodzka 53), and another in front of the Kraków Opera building (ul. Lubicz 48)."
and Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"In Greek mythology, Eros ...was the Greek god of love. His Roman counterpart was Cupid("desire"). Some myths make him a primordial god, while in other myths, he is the son of Aphrodite...
Primordial god
According to Hesiod (c. 700 BC), one of the most ancient of all Greek sources, Eros (the god of love) was the fourth god to come into existence, coming after Chaos, Gaia (the Earth), and Tartarus (the Abyss or the Underworld).
Homer does not mention Eros. However, Parmenides (c. 400 BC), one of the pre-socratic philosophers, makes Eros the first of all the gods to come into existence.
The Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries featured Eros as a very original god, but not quite primordial, since he was the child of Night (Nyx). Aristophanes (c. 400 BC), influenced by Orphism, relates the birth of Eros:
At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night (Nyx), Darkness (Erebus), and the Abyss (Tartarus). Earth, the Air and Heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Darkness, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Love (Eros) with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in the deep Abyss with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light."
As for the Asteroid, Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"433 Eros is an S-type near-Earth asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 kilometres (21.4×7.0×7.0 mi) in size, the second-largest near-Earth asteroid after 1036 Ganymed. It was discovered in 1898 and was the first near-Earth asteroid discovered. It was the first asteroid orbited by an Earth probe (in 2000). It belongs to the Amor group.
Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid, the first known to come within the orbit of Mars. Objects in such an orbit can remain there for only a few hundred million years before the orbit is perturbed by gravitational interactions. Dynamical integrations suggest that Eros may evolve into an Earth-crosser within as short an interval as two million years, and has a roughly 50% chance of doing so over a time scale of 108–109 years. It is a potential Earth impactor, comparable in size to the impactor that created Chicxulub crater and led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The NEAR Shoemaker probe visited Eros twice, first with a 1998 flyby, and then by orbiting it in 2000 when it extensively photographed its surface. On February 12, 2001, at the end of its mission, it landed on the asteroid's surface using its maneuvering jets."