The town of Calafat is marked in the history of Romania as the place where the Independence War of 1877 against the Ottoman Empire began. From this town, on April 26, 1877, from a place on the Danube, the first cannon was fired towards the positions occupied by the Turkish army on the Bulgarian shore. A few years after the end of the war, there was erected a monument reminiscent of this glorious episode in the birth of the modern Romanian state. In 1977, on the anniversary of 100 years, the authorities moved the original monument to another place and in this place was erected the Memorial of Independence, the work of the sculptor Pavel Bucur. It is made of travertine, in a bas-relief style, having representative battle scenes on the facade.