In Brazil, strong gusts of wind caused the Statue of Liberty in Guaíba, in the Porto Alegre region, to collapse. The collapse – which caused no injuries – caused the destruction of the upper part of the monument, while the base remained intact. Clearly, it is a copy of the original, built in New York in 1876, for a total height of 93 meters.
But did you know that there are around 300 replicas of this famous monument in the world? As also reported on the official website of Statue of Liberty, in 1950 i Boy Scouts of America – to celebrate their 40th anniversary – they commissioned the production of approx 200 copper replicas, approximately 2.5 meters high, distributed in almost all states of the USA.
Among the most important copies, there are those found in New York: the first located inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses one of the replicas sold to finance the construction of the original Statue in the 1880s. Outside the Brooklyn Museum, however, a copy measuring approximately 14 meters has been installed.
Outside the USA, however, the closest link between the original work and its replicas is in France – homeland of the work’s author Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi – where 8 copies can be found. The most famous one, approximately 11 meters high, was donated by the American community of Paris in 1889 to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution and was positioned a few steps from the Eiffel Tower, symbolically positioned in the direction of its “big sister” in the Big Apple. Bartholdi also created a bronze replica for the 1900 Universal Exhibition, which was transferred to the Musée d’Orsay in 2012 to ensure its preservation. In Japan, however, there is a bronze replica in the port of Tokyo, which has now become a permanent tourist attraction.
And in Italy? In our country, however, there are no exact replicas of this monument, even though numerous statues are dedicated to freedom and democratic values such as justice.
It must be said, however, that a large part of these replicas were built for commercial purposes, as in the case of the Las Vegas replica at the New York-New York Hotel approximately 46 meters high (half the original one), but also as a symbol of democracy and resistance, such as the one erected by Chinese students in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
