The Monument to the Heroes of the Air

A short distance from Piata Victoriei (Victoriei Square), going to Charles de Gaulle Square, you will find The Monument to the Heroes of the Air. It rises in the middle of the Aviatorilor Road, towering, imposing, massive.

In 1927 a committee was formed for the construction of the Aviators Monument. They decided to organize a contest and invited all the artists, painters, and sculptors to participate. The contest was held at Romanian Athenaeum. Here were exposed 20 projects and the public voted in secret for the winning one. The winning project was the one belonging to the architect Lidia Kotzebue. She used as a model the body of the boxer Joe Luis and for the head of the aviator, she used as a model an image from a catalog with famous pilots.

The actual monument, made in bronze, was inaugurated in 1935 with the participation of the entire state leadership, ministers and aeronautical authority representatives, priests and curious passers-by, and, most important, King Carol II and Prince Nicolae. Before unveiling the monument, King Carol II said: "We inaugurate, on this day of celebration and remembrance of aviators, the monument through which an entire country worships those who, with the sacrifice of their lives, have strengthened our aeronautical power and helped to make our country famous. May this stone and this bronze remain forever as a memory, as a sign of devotion and faith. May those who, passing on this path, look at this monument, lift their souls, strengthen their faith, and have the same feeling that we have, those who have fought for our aeronautics from the beginning: that every day a step is taken in this country on this land, a step which is sprinkled with blood in our country. Today I wish for our pilots that their momentum and courage will not perish, that the aeronautics program will be eternal and stronger every day. May these bronze plaques, reminiscent of sacrifices, be placed on this stone as rarely as possible!".

And the king's words are saying everything about the importance of the Monument to the Heroes of the Air. We recommend you to take your time to admire it and to offer a moment of silence for those aviator heroes who fell between 1912-1938 whose names are written on the 13 bronze plates, but also for all the aviator heroes who contributed to the development of the Romanian aviation.