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The square dates to Bogotá's very founding in August 1538, when Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada laid out the city's original Plaza Mayor on this site, following the standard Spanish colonial grid plan built around a central square. It kept that name for three centuries, serving as the seat of Spanish colonial authority in the region.
The square was renamed Plaza de Bolívar in 1846 to honor Simón Bolívar, the South American independence leader, the same year his bronze statue -- sculpted by Italian artist Pietro Tenerani -- was unveiled at its center, becoming the first public monument raised anywhere in Colombia.
The plaza has witnessed some of the most consequential events in modern Colombian history. On April 9, 1948, the assassination of popular presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán nearby triggered the Bogotazo, a wave of rioting that destroyed much of the surrounding district and reshaped the city. In November 1985, the M-19 guerrilla group seized the Palace of Justice on the plaza's south side, leading to a military siege that killed close to 100 people, including half of Colombia's Supreme Court justices; the current Palace of Justice building, completed in 1999, replaced the one destroyed in the assault.