History
The park was designed by French landscape artist Édouard Redont in 1900 on Filaret Hill, under the supervision of Constantin Istrati, then president of the Romanian Academy. It was inaugurated in 1906, on the 40th anniversary of the coronation of King Carol I. The park had an initial surface area of 36 hectares, including the 20,000m² lake Filaret. It hosted the 1906 Bucharest Exhibition, and included many pavilions and buildings, of which only the Technical Museum and the open air Roman Arenas survive.
The park once contained busts of Ioan Lahovari and Constantin Istrati, but these were replaced after 1948 with busts of George Coşbuc, Alexandru Sahia, Nicolae Bălcescu (these three by Constantin Baraschi) and the "shoemaker poet" Theodor Neculuţă (by E. Mereanu), which remain today.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, inaugurated in 1923 in memory of Romanian soldiers fallen in World War I, was dismantled and moved in 1958 to Mărăşeşti, being replaced by a Mausoleum of the Communist Heroes (see below). In 1991 it was returned to the park, to be moved again in 2007, closer to its original location.
Read more about this topic: Carol Park
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