became more and more important. The main director of construction in the neighbourhood, Philipp Gerlach, developed these open areas into important city plazas, and they were originally named the Wilhelms-Markt, the Achteck am Potsdamer Thor, and the Rondell. The Wilhelms-Markt is so named because it is located on Wilhelmstraße. The plaza is square, and planted with linden trees. Each corner of the square plaza contains a large marble statue of a famous Prussian general. The four generals honored in the plaza are Kurt Christoph Graf von Schwerin, Hans Karl von Winterfeldt, Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, and Francis Edward James Keith. The Achteck am Potsdamer Thor was renamed the Leipzigplatz (now Leipziger Platz) in 1814 for the Battle of Leipzig, and as its German names implies, the plaza has eight corners. The Rondell is a round plaza, and was subsequently renamed twice. It was renamed the Belle-Alliance-Platz in 1815 (named after La Belle Alliance and used as an alternative name for the Battle of Waterloo), and the Mehringplatz, after Franz Mehring, in 1947. The Gendarmenmarkt, Friedrichstadt's main plaza, experienced many changes toward the end of the 18th century. Between 1774 and 1776, a small French theater house was built, which was later christened the Nationaltheater as the establishment came to the forefront in German theater. Also, between 1780 and 1785, the French and German churches on the plaza built distinctive cupolaed towers on top of their churches, leading to the two being known as the Deutscher Dom and the Französischer Dom (English: German and French Cathedrals, respectively) to the present day. In 1800, the Nationaltheater was replaced with a larger theater, the Schauspielhaus (English: Play House), whose architecture had to be designed to compete with the new cupola towers on the Gendarmenmarkt's twin churches. However, public reaction to the new theater's design was negative, and many people called the Carl Gotthard Langhans-designed building the "Koffer" (English: Trunk or suitcase). Luckily for dissatisfied Berliners, the Schauspielhaus burnt to the ground in 1817 and a new theater, designed by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, was built in its place. In 1843, after 25 years of peace in Prussia, a monument to this achievement, the Friedenssäule (English: Peace Column) was built in the then Belle-Alliance-Platz. The fortified walls which surrounded greater Berlin became a hindrance to traffic, which was becoming consistently busier and more uncontrolled. Although the walls had been constructed for the purposes of keeping