Central Park (Professor Ioan Nemeș Park), Suceava

The Professor Ioan Nemeș Park is a rectangular green space in central Suceava, bounded by Strada Ștefan cel Mare (west), Strada Mitropoliei (south), Strada Ana Ipătescu (east) and Aleea Ion Grămadă (north), opposite the Administrative Palace. It covers about 2.5 hectares and is the second-largest park in the city, after the Șipote-Cetate Park. To the south-east it continues into the smaller Flags Park. On 12 November 2009 it was named after the Suceava physicist and biologist Ioan Nemeș (1924-2009), an honorary citizen of the city, but locals still call it the Central Park. The park was laid out on the site of older gardens that were reduced in the second half of the nineteenth century as the town grew. The present Natural Sciences Museum building (1811-1814) and the Roman Catholic church of St John of Nepomuk (1832-1836) already existed and were absorbed into the park. Under Mayor Franz Des Loges a leisure pavilion was opened here, and in 1908 a bust of Emperor Franz Joseph I was set up; it no longer exists. The oldest surviving monument is the bronze bust of Ciprian Porumbescu by the sculptor Ion Cârdei, unveiled in 1933 near the church of St John of Nepomuk. At the north-west entrance stands the bust of Petru Rareș by Gheorghe Covalschi (1977), on the site of a statue of Ștefan cel Mare that was moved to Câmpulung Moldovenesc. The park also has a statue of Pope John Paul II (2009), the mission cross of 1883, the Suceava heroes' monument (1965, renovated in 1993), a bust of the painter Dimitrie Loghin (2023), a wooden gazebo and two fountains. Its trees include oak, sycamore maple, lime, chestnut, pine and yew, and in front of the museum grows a copper beech about 25 m tall, protected as a natural monument.