At the end of the eighteenth century, the construction of a large building, nicknamed the Budapest Bastille, began on the site of the modern square. By the way, Austro-Hungarian forces placed the captive soldiers of Napoleon in this prison. After the turbulent events of the early nineteenth century in the calm years before the Hungarian war for independence from Austria, the wife of the famous politician and reformer Istvan Secheni planted a sycamore in the garden, which still grows here. In the mid-19th century, during the years of the war for independence from Austria, the first Hungarian Prime Minister, Lajos Battiani, was executed in prison. At the end of the nineteenth century, the prison building, which underwent many different uses from the gymnasium to maritime navigation offices, was demolished. On its place, a large beautiful square arranged with beautiful buildings around. These buildings still visible today, for example, the building of the National Bank and the Stock Exchange. After the First World War, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire ceased to exist, the square was called Freedom Square for the first time. It is very symbolic that the area on which there was a large prison of the old world began to be called the freedom square of the new world.