The Statue of Liberty, or Lady Liberty, stands on Liberty Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbour, to welcome all visitors and immigrants.

            Designed by Frederic Auguste Bartoldi and Gustave Eiffel, the statue was given to the American people by France in 1884.

            Lady Liberty is a colossal woman, standing upright, wearing a robe and a seven point spiked crown symbolizing the Seven Seas.

            She is holding a flame torch up high in her right hand and has a stone tablet in her left hand. The inscription JULY IV MDCCLXXVI on this tablet commemorates the date of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).

            Emma Lazarus’s famous poem, The New Colossus (1886), is written at the base of the statue:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“Donnez-moi vos pauvres, vos exténués,

Vos masses entassées qui aspirent à vivre libres,

Le rebus de vos rivages surpeuplés,

Envoyez-les moi, les déshérités, ballottés par la tempête,

J’éclaire leur route jusqu’à la porte d’or ! »