The capital of the United States now has one less reason to be jealous of America's largest city in terms of population.

Some 135 years after the arrival of his big sister in New York, a Statue of Liberty in scale model was installed in Washington on Wednesday as a testimony of the Franco-American "fraternity".

The approximately 3-meter-high statue was inaugurated in the afternoon by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, accompanied by his American counterpart Antony Blinken.

It is urgent to reaffirm the values ​​symbolized by the statue, such as freedom, emancipation, law, insisted during the ceremony the two heads of diplomacy.

Blinken and Le Drian recall their shared values

“In front of the brutalization of the world, the reinforced conflicts everywhere, the competition of the powers, the refusal of the rules, it is important to recall the fundamentals. And the fundamentals, we share them, ”said Jean-Yves Le Drian. “Our partnership, our work together, our common destiny is as important - I would say even more important - today than ever. We both have the feeling, together, to continue this remarkable journey with the United States and France, together ”, confided, in French, Antony Blinken.

The bronze statue now sits in the garden of the residence of the French Ambassador to the United States, after a transit that saw it pass not far from Liberty Island, south of Manhattan, where the monumental work is erected. " Liberty Enlightening the World ". "The little sister has arrived," said Philippe Etienne, the French Ambassador to Washington, said. “She spent a week in New York for the American National Day - Independence Day - she was on Ellis Island, she was looking at her big sister. And now it is in place for July 14, ”he added.

On loan from the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts (CNAM) and cast on the same mold as that used by sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the statue traveled in a specially designed plexiglass sarcophagus and strapped in a container transported by the French shipowner CMA-CGM.

World

The very Francophile Antony Blinken confirmed as Secretary of State

World

Four years after the riots, Charlottesville debunks its Confederate statues

  • Freedom

  • Statue

  • World

  • United States

  • Jean-Yves Le Drian

  • Washington