Lafayette Park (also known as Lafayette Square) is a seven-acre public park located directly north of the White House in Washington, D.C. Named after the Marquis de Lafayette, a French general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, the park is one of the most significant public gathering places in the nation. It is a cultural landscape that has historically been the locus of thousands of demonstrations, both small and large, of individual citizens exercising their First Amendment right to free speech, the freedom to assemble peacefully, and the right to petition their government.