Revolution Square, Bucharest

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Revolution Square (Romanian: Piaţa Revoluţiei) is a square in central Bucharest, on Calea Victoriei, named after the 1989 Romanian Revolution.

The former Royal Palace (now the National Museum of Art of Romania), the Athenaeum, the Athénée Palace Hotel, the University of Bucharest Library and the Memorial of Rebirth are located here. The square also houses the building of the former Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (from where Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife fled by helicopter on December 22, 1989). In 1990, the building became the seat of the Senate and since 2006 it houses the Ministry of Administration and Interior.^[1]

Prior to 1948, an equestrian statue of Carol I of Romania stood there. Created in 1930 by the Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, the statue was destroyed in 1948 by the Communists, who later had to pay damages to the sculptor. In 2005, the Romanian Minister of Culture decided to recreate the destroyed statue from a model that was kept by Meštrović's family. In 2007, the Bucharest City Hall assigned the project to the sculptor Florin Codre, who is going to design an original statue of Carol inspired by Meštrović's model.^[2]

[edit] Image gallery

Iuliu Maniu's statue in the Revolution Square (the building of the Interior Ministry can be seen in the background)	Library of the University of Bucharest	Another view of the Library	National Museum of Art (the former Royal Palace)
Athénée Palace-Hilton hotel	Memorial of Rebirth	Plaques bearing the names of those killed during the Revolution (in the background: the Creţulescu Church and the National Museum of Art)	The base of the Memorial of Rebirth with the University Library in the background