The Copou Park is a historic park located in the Copou Hill neighborhood, Iaşi

Iasi

Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. A landmark of Iaşi, with centuries old trees, Copou Park is one of the first Romanian coordinated public parks.

History

Developed starting 1833, at the time when Iaşi was the capital of Moldavia

Moldavia

Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...

, the park was designed by Gheorghe Asachi

Gheorghe Asachi

Gheorghe Asachi was a Moldavian-born Romanian prose writer, poet, painter, historian, dramatist and translator. An Enlightenment-educated polymath and polyglot, he was one of the most influential people of his generation...

 and Mihail Singurov. The garden was enlarged in 1849 and then in 1852, and in 1860 street lamps were installed here for the first time.

The park has an area of over 10 hectare

Hectare

The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...

s and includes the oldest monument in Romania, Obelisk of Lions (1834), a 13.5 m (44.3 ft) tall obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

, dedicated to the Law of Organic Rules

Regulamentul Organic

Regulamentul Organic was a quasi-constitutional organic law enforced in 1834–1835 by the Imperial Russian authorities in Moldavia and Wallachia...

, the first law on political, administrative and juridical organization in Romanian Principalities, the Mihai Eminescu

Mihai Eminescu

Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...

 Museum and his historic Linden

Tilia

Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...

 Tree, the Junimea

Junimea

Junimea was a Romanian literary society founded in Iaşi in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi...

Alley and many other statues and bronze busts.