Freedom Square

This guide to Freedom Square in Tallinn opens with the design competition for Estonia's War of Independence monument, an idea first proposed in 1919, buried through Soviet occupation, and finally revived when parliament approved it in 2005. More than forty architects entered the contest, and four young Estonians won with a scheme called Libertas, built from glass shaped into the Cross of Liberty, Estonia's highest wartime honor. This ground has worn many names before, from a haymarket to Peter's Square, named for a tsar whose statue once stood here.