Avram Iancu Square is the city's grand civic space — broader and more open than Piața Unirii, with the imposing Orthodox Cathedral on one side and the neo-baroque Opera and National Theatre on the other. The statue of Avram Iancu, the 1848 Transylvanian Romanian revolutionary, stands at the centre.
The square took its current form in the 1930s as a Romanian-Orthodox counterpart to the Hungarian and Catholic Piața Unirii — two very different statements of who Cluj belongs to, both still in plain sight. The walk between the two squares takes ten minutes and crosses the city centre.