Victory Square
From NewspeakWiki
Victory Square - Known as Trafalgar Square before the Revolution. The following monuments can be found there:
"(Winston Smith) wandered round the base of the enormous fluted column, at the top of which Big Brother's statue gazed southward towards the skies where he had vanquished the Eurasian aeroplanes (the Eastasian aeroplanes, it had been, a few years ago) in the Battle of Airstrip One. In the street in front of it there was a statue of a man on horseback which was supposed to represent Oliver Cromwell."
In other words, the famous statue on Nelson's Column has been replaced with a statue of Big Brother; the four bronze panels around the pedestal have also been replaced by telescreens. This is obviously both an attempt to erase history and parasite on a national myth.
As for the "statue of Cromwell", it's in fact a statue of Cromwell's antithesis, Charles I, i.e. Cromwell's main enemy; an old proto-revolutionary obviously fits Ingsoc history writing better than an old king.
The church St Martin's-in-the-Fields has also been turned into a museum, "used for propaganda displays of various kinds - scale models of rocket bombs and Floating Fortresses, wax-work tableaux illustrating enemy atrocities, and the like."
The old National Gallery is simply referred to as "the picture gallery". It's more than likely that most of the portraits in the gallery have been destroyed and replaced with Ingsoc leaders and heroes.
[edit] Background
George Orwell's source of inspiration is not difficult to identify: Victory Square is a common name for central squares in many cities of the former Soviet Union, as well as a few capitals in the former satellite states. The Russian name is Ploshchad Pobedy and it refers to the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
It seems that squares and streets always have had propaganda value in totalitarian states. For instance, the famous Piłsudski Square in Warsaw was named Adolf Hitler Platz during the German occupation and Victory Square after the Soviet victory; after the fall of the Soviet bloc, it was given its original name Piłsudski Square again.
