Starting next month, pedestrians in Kalorama will be able to glimpse their very own version of the Statue of Liberty. The statue—a mere 9 feet, as opposed to the 305-foot original in New York Harbor—will sit in the gardens of the French ambassador’s residence for a 10-year run, a loan from France’s National Museum of Arts and Crafts.
Like the original, which came as a gift designed to strengthen the new French republic’s relationship with a rising United States, the miniature version is visiting on a diplomatic mission of sorts. “A new era in relations between France and the United States will open up, that’s what we want,” the museum’s general administrator, Olivier Faron, told Reuters in an interview.
The statue is currently aboard a container ship heading for the US. It’ll go on display on Ellis Island—right opposite the real thing—from July 1 to July 5 before heading to DC straight in time for Bastille Day celebrations on July 14.
Though it’s most famous as a New York icon, there are actually numerous other versions of the statue, including one near the Seine in Paris. The DC-bound little sister is the first of up to 12 authorized casts of the original plaster model made in 1878 by French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.
