The statue commemorates the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence. It was given to the United States by the people of France in 1886, to represent the friendship between the two countries established during the American Revolution. It represents a woman wearing a stola, a crown and sandals, trampling a broken chain, and with a torch in her raised right hand and a "tabula ansata", or tablet where the date of the Declaration of Independence "" (1776) is written, in her left hand. The statue is on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, and it welcomes visitors, immigrants, and returning Americans travelling by ship.