Liberty's birth
From first clay to New York harbour — the whole story in its maker's house.
Manecke — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Krzysztof Golik — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gzen92 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · karlheinz klingbeil — CC BY 4.0
The story outgrows sculpture: how an idea becomes one nation's gift to another, built giant in Paris, dismantled, shipped, re-erected. And for anyone who has seen New York or dreams of it, seeing the cradle has its own savour.
To mark American independence's centenary and the two nations' friendship — the statue crowd-funded in France, the pedestal in America. And Bartholdi, the story goes, gave Liberty a face close to his Colmar mother's.
Bartholdi fountains and statues dot the squares, plaqued and signed — and the little Liberty stands at the northern road entrance if you drive out.
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In an old family house on the merchants' street, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born in 1834 — the man who sculpted the Statue of Liberty. The house is now his museum, and the visitor's surprise is that America's most famous symbol was born, as idea and clay, in a small Alsatian town. The museum walks through 'Liberty Enlightening the World' from first sketches and clay models to photographs of the giant taking shape in Paris and its assembly in New York — with the statue's ear at full scale to teach you the size. Around the masterpiece, Bartholdi's other works, many of which already stand in Colmar's squares: the Lion of Belfort among them. A short, likeable visit right on the old-town route, with the sculptor's courtyard house worth half of it.
From first clay to New York harbour — the whole story in its maker's house.
A full-scale piece that makes the size suddenly physical.
Models of works that actually fill Colmar's squares — you then meet them on your walk.
30 Rue des Marchands, 68000 Colmar