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Liberty Enlightening the World, known more commonly as the Statue of Liberty, is a large statue that was presented to the United States by France in 1886.
It stands at Liberty Island, New York in New York Harbor as a welcome to all visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans.
The copper patina-clad statue, dedicated on October 28, 1886, commemorates the centennial of the United States and is a gesture of friendship from France to America. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue and obtained a U.S. patent useful for raising construction funds through the sale of miniatures.
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) engineered the internal structure.
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique.

The statue is of a female figure standing upright, dressed in a robe and a seven point spiked rays representing a nimbus, holding a stone tablet close to her body in her left hand and a flaming torch high in her right hand.

The tablet bears the words "JULY IV MDCCLXXVI" (July 4, 1776), commemorating the date of the United States Declaration of Independence.

The statue is made of a sheeting of pure copper, hung on a framework of steel (originally puddled iron) with the exception of the flame of the torch, which is coated in gold leaf. It stands atop a rectangular stonework pedestal with a foundation in the shape of an irregular eleven-pointed star. The statue is 151' 1" (46.5 m) tall, with the pedestal and foundation adding another 154 feet (46.9 m).

The Statue of Liberty was, from 1886 until the jet age, often one of the first glimpses of the United States for millions of immigrants after ocean voyages from Europe.

Visually, the Statue of Liberty appears to draw inspiration from the Italian "Sancarlone" (The huge Saint Charles - a giant statue built in the 1697 to commemorate the arcibishop of Milan) or the Colossus of Rhodes.