Great Union Day (
Romanian:
Ziua Marii Uniri, also called
Unification Day occurring on December 1, is the
national holiday of
Romania.
It commemorates the assembly of the delegates of ethnic Romanians held in
Alba Iulia, which declared the
Union of Transylvania with Romania.
This holiday was set after the
Romanian Revolution and it marks the unification of
Transylvania, but also of the provinces of
Bessarabia and
Bukovina with the
Romanian Kingdom, in 1918.
Prior to 1948, the national holiday of Romania was set to be on May 10, which had a double meaning: it was the day on which
Carol Iset foot on the Romanian soil (in 1866), and it was the day on which the prince ratified the Declaration of Independence (from the
Ottoman Empire) in 1877.
In
Communist Romania, the date of the national holiday was set to August 23 to mark the 1944 overthrow of the pro-
fascist government of Marshal
Ion Antonescu.
Every year, an annual military parade on
Constitution Square in
Bucharest is held in honor of the occasion. A parade is also held in the city of
Alba Iulia.