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Let us step back in time to the Plaine Monceau quarter in the year 1880.

The tiny rue de Chazelles has retained its old Parisian suburban charm.

Large workshops start to spring up amongst long-established craftsmen's boutiques.

In one of these large workshops important work is being undertaken: it is the 24th October 1881 and festivities are underway in the workshops run by mechanical constructors MM. Caget, Gauthier and Cie at 25 rue de Chazelles.

The buildings are decked in French and American colours. The occasion: the inserting of the first rivet linking a gigantic statue by the sculptor Auguste Bartholdi to its pedestal. The work in question was "La liberté éclairant le monde", or the "Statue of Liberty", which was destined to be erected at the entrance to New York harbour. France elected Bartholdi to create the historic monument to mark the centenary of the independence of the United States.

Let us go into house number 23, rue de Chazelles: the modelling workshop is located here. Here, plasterers work away on the many life-size sections of "Miss Liberty". At number 21 of the same street is Bartholdi's private workshop, where he eventually set up home so as to better supervise his work. In another area of the workshop, at number 23 rue de Chazelles, is Vulcan's lair. Craftsmen work away creating structural sections under the direction of G. Eiffel, and copperware workers fashion copper sheets for the outer layer.

It was not until one Sunday, in early 1884, that several Paris residents burst through the doors of number 25, rue de Chazelles, to visit the workshop where the great statue had taken form. At that point, the statue's head stood high over the rooftops of Paris. The statue was subsequently dismantled, and in early 1884, was sent by train and ship over to New York. The statue was inaugurated on 28th October 1886. Bartholdi himself was there to unveil the statue, and the great torch was lit in the very same place where, little more than a century previously, the great figure of Liberty, symbol of a great idea, had taken her first steps, and which the modern spirit still encapsulates today.