Romanian flag

and its meaning

Romanian flag is a "Tricolor" (its Romanian name, meaning ThreeColors), using blue, yellow and red, with colors arranged in vertical stripes of equal size.

The scholars say that our flag colors represent the sky/freedom (for blue), the earth/richness (for yellow) and blood/mankind (for red). This is great, b...

Each of the three colors of Romanian flag was representative for one of the Romanian provinces.



Red was certainly the color of Moldavia.

Wallachian flag had big changes from a ruler to the other. Still, the most used color was a pale yellow.

Transylvania was part of Hungarian Kingdom and later, of Austrian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. There was no place for a Romanian flag there. But Romanian noblemen living in Transylvania had all, with no exception, the light blue color on their heralds.

So, when these three colors come together they mean something more. They mean Romanians unity, their permanent connection, doesn't matter on what side of Carpathians they lived along the times.

These colors were kept from Roman occupation times. The Roman Emperor Justinian (527 - 565) decreted:

He defined this way the territories obedient to his Archiepiscopate.

And the Roman Emperor was inspired from our Dacian ancestors flag. This is a very interesting flag, with its own history. I love their romantic interpretation of the colors. Click here to read more about this old flag of Romania.

Earliest history of the Romanian flag has so little information. Still...

As a Romanian symbol, the three colors (blue, yellow and red), used all on the same flag are of relatively recent date, appearing for the first time in the first half of the XIX century.

Petrache Poenaru (the inventor of the fountain pen) designed the flag of Romania, in its present shape, apparently after the French model. He was a trustful man of Tudor Vladimirescu, the leader of the 1821 Wallachian Revolution.

Tudor's army flag was made up of two pieces of silk, about equal and square-shaped, one white and one blue, sewn around the edges with a mix of red, blue and yellow tassels.

But when the Tudor Vladimirescu's army entered in Bucharest, they have worn for the first time the "Tricolorul" designed by Poenaru, which was also acquired by their followers from 1848 Revolution.

The Wallacian ruler Alexandru Dimitrie Ghica (1834 - 1842) used for the first time the three colors in his army and commercial navy flags.

The revolutionary year of 1848 shows us the Romanian revolutionaries from all three provinces flying the flag of blue, yellow, red, with blue near the flagpole. That will be decided as the national flag, by Decree no. 252 of the temporary Revolutionary Government in Bucharest.

In the beginning Romanian revolutionaries from Transylvania used flags with horizontal bands the colors being blue, white, red. During the revolution, gradually, all the Romanian flags will replace white with yellow.

Documents attest that in some historical periods, the flag of Romania had the three colors arranged horizontally with the top in red, yellow in the middle and blue at the base. Also, the proportion of color was not the same as now (33% for each color).

In 1859, with the double election of Alexandru Ioan Cuza in Moldavia and Wallachia, was born the national flag. But it had a horizontal arrangement of color bands. The first flag from 1859, in use until 1862, had the blue strip above. Later, in the second period of the reign of Cuza, the red ribbon was ordered to the top.

In 1866, in the first Constitution of Romania, the three colors - red, yellow and blue were confirmed and enshrined as legal national colors.

When Prince Carol I assessed the throne, the Romanian flag and the flags of military units were arranged vertically, with the blue at the flagpole. This flag was kept until 1947.

In 1948, the communist regime was eager to remove as much of everything that was national tradition. They replaced the country's coat of arms, resulting from a combination of the traditional heraldic elements, with the communist Soviet elements.

In December 1989, people have broken the communist symbol from the Romanian flag and returned to what had been the flag of Romania from 1872 until 1947.