The huge Ala-Too Square, which was built in 1984 to mark the 60th anniversary of the Kyrgyz SSR as Lenin Square, is the most important place in the city. After the declaration of independence in 1991, it was renamed. Here all public holidays are officially celebrated and parades are held. Until 2005, the obligatory 18-ton and 17-meter-high monument to Lenin was still in front of the National Museum. Then it was relegated to the north side of the museum. There is now a large equestrian statue of mythical mana on the square. The Kyrgyz flag with the yurt roof wreath as a symbol flutters into the sky next to it. On March 24, 2005, after unrest across the country, the largest demonstration of the tulip revolution against the then government under President Askar Akayev took place on Ala Too Square with 15,000 participants. In 2008, a commemorative event for the Kyrgyz writer Chingis Aitmatov, who died that year, took place on the square, in honor of which another statue was erected in 2011. In the years that followed, Ala-Too Square was the scene of protests against the respective government as well as of demonstrations during the change of government in Kyrgyzstan in 2010. As part of the protests against the arrest of former Kyrgyz President Atambayev, the night of the 7th August 2019 - a day before we arrived in Kyrgyzstan for a trekking vacation - several dozen demonstrators in the central square of the capital and demanded the immediate resignation of the incumbent President Dzhenbekov.