Flamme de la Liberté - Stèle commémorative à la Princesse Diana

The "Flamme de la Liberté" [Liberty Flame], erected in 1987 near to the Alma bridge in Paris and transformed into a stele commemorating the Princess Diana, by her supporters, has been fully restored, embellished and heightened. The monument will now be protected from over enthusiastic, notably graphic, admirers of the Princess of Wales by a symbolic chain encircling the site. The monument was given to the French in 1987 by the daily International Herald Tribune, during the American bicentenary as a symbol of the friendship between French and American people. It sits on a grey and black marble plinth and is a gilded copper full-size replica, of the flame of Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty erected at the entrance to the city of New York. In the days following the death of Princess Diana on 31 August 1997 in a car accident in the Alma bridge tunnel, her admirers transformed the Flame of Liberty into a commemorative monument. Attracting hundreds of tourists daily, the Flame was the recipient of bouquets of flowers, poems on paper stuck onto the plinth and sometimes engraved directly with a knife, all of which led to a deterioration of the monument. During the renovation work, bouquets, graffiti in all languages and photographs were placed daily on the surrounding boarding.