île aux cygnes Pier

The Île aux Cygnes is a narrow, man-made strip of land stretching half a mile down the middle of the Seine. It was created in eighteen twenty-seven as a dike to protect the port of Grenelle. The island owes its current shape to the construction of the Bir-Hakeim bridge, which sliced through it. A bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty stands at the downstream tip, facing westward toward the original in New York harbor, placed there by the American community in Paris.