Lady Liberté exhibition on the making of the Statue of Liberty at the Musée des Arts et Métiers

Lady Liberté. De la sueur, de l'audace, du génie

Now showing22 September 2026 – 1 August 2027€21

An immersive look at how the Statue of Liberty was built in 1880s Paris, tracing the copper, iron and ingenuity, including Gustave Eiffel's internal frame, behind the Franco-American monument.

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On now All of November 2026

One room in, Auguste Bartholdi leans over a mezzanine and talks to you. He's a projection: an actor filmed in costume, with Bartholdi's face rebuilt from photographs. Below him the workshop set is real, and that mix of built décor and 3D video carries the whole show.

With a headset on, you follow nine sequences through the Gaget workshops on rue de Chazelles, where workers cold-hammered 300 copper sheets over wooden templates. The route ends inside Gustave Eiffel's iron frame, then at the crates for New York. Real pieces from the museum's stores sit between the sets. Bartholdi paid for much of it by opening the site to visitors and selling them photos and scraps of copper: an early Kickstarter, backer rewards included.

Sortiraparis said it "breaks the mold", but noted it sticks to engineering and skips the statue's politics. The route costs €9 on top of the €12 museum ticket (€21 full, €18 reduced). The audio is in French and English.

Look for

Bartholdi on the mezzanine
Look up in the workshop room: the sculptor appears above the real set and addresses you, an actor in costume wearing Bartholdi's face rebuilt from photographs.
The copper index finger
A life-size finger of the statue in hammered copper, weighing 40 kilos, out of the museum's stores for this show.
The plaster ear
A cast of Liberty's ear, 135 centimetres tall, which shows the scale the workshop carpenters and coppersmiths had to work at.
The souvenir fragment
A scrap of copper engraved with Bartholdi's monogram, one of the pieces he sold to the public to help fund the statue.
Inside Eiffel's frame
The last set puts you inside the statue, where the iron skeleton Eiffel designed holds up the copper skin, before it is crated for New York.

Good for

Evening Visits
Nerding Out
Teenagers

Skip if

You want the statue's politics and symbolism: this show sticks to how it was built.

With kids

The museum's Les Fabricateurs workshops have children make Liberty's flame or a relief model of the statue. Under-26s get into the museum free but still pay €9 for the immersive route.