Name
The square was originally Piaţa Jianu, from Iancu Jianu, a haiduc (brigand) and folk hero who fought together with Tudor Vladimirescu in the 1821 Wallachian Revolution. In 1940 it was renamed Piaţa Adolf Hitler, but its original name was restored shortly after 23 August 1944, when Romania joined the Allies and turned against the Axis Powers.
However, following the Soviet occupation of Romania, its name was changed in 1948 to Piaţa Generalissim I. V. Stalin, lasting until the early 1960s, when Romania began to assert a more independent foreign policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. A statue of Stalin stood on the square between 1951 until a summer night in 1962, when four tanks and twelve bulldozers removed it in several hours. The square was renamed Piaţa Aviatorilor, Aviators' Square.
Its final name change happened in the late 1990s, the square being renamed after Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French Forces and first president of the French Fifth Republic.
Read more about this topic: Charles De Gaulle Square
Famous quotes containing the word name:
“Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore than name. Are they all alike. I think so.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“What is it? a learned man
Could give it a clumsy name.
Let him name it who can,
The beauty would be the same.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)