Union Monument, Iași

It consists of a central piece (the Motherland) and four smaller ones representing the historic provinces of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina (incorporated into Romania at the end of World War I) and the Romanian diaspora.

Demolished in 1947 as the Romanian Communist Party was tightening its grip on the country, it was rebuilt in 1999, this time being placed in Piaţa Naţiunii, in front of the Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy.

On 1 August 1924, Princess Olga Sturdza sent a letter to the Iaşi mayor's office, expressing her intention to donate to the city a marble monument symbolizing the Great Union of 1918: Heeding the especially dear call to action of Romanians' thoughts that wishes to see erected in Iaşi a monument commemorating the Great Union, which was realised here, I have the honour of informing you that for almost five years I have been working on an allegorical group, depicting the provinces joined together in the Motherland's bosom.

The monument is almost finished and brings together in a marble group, almost five metres high, five figures representing: the Motherland, Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina and Romanians from everywhere who have remained outside our borders.

On the front side were inscribed the words of King Ferdinand, spoken on 5 December 1918: "I declare that all lands inhabited by Romanians, from the Tisa to the Nistru, to be united for the ages in the Kingdom of Romania.

Finally, on the back side were carved Olga Sturdza's words: "To the united people of Romania and to Iaşi – the cradle of unions – I offer this work of my heart and my hands.

However, newspapers of the day claimed that the feminine figures in fact depicted the queen's daughters, the princesses Elisabeth, Maria and Ileana, and that the little boy was based on Prince Mircea, who had died at the age of three in 1916, at the beginning of the war, and remained buried in Bucharest.

"[3] In 1947, the year the Paris Peace Treaties confirmed Romania's loss of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, the Armistice Committee ordered the monument's demolition.

It was placed in Piaţa Naţiunii, in front of the Grigore T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iaşi, because in 1957 a statue of Mihai Eminescu was installed in the previous location.