Travel Q&A: Visiting Liberty's home _ that's a crowning moment.(South Florida Sun-Sentinel)

Q. When we visited the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor and learned that it was a gift from the French people, I hoped I'd someday get to see the place where it came from. I hope to be in Europe soon and would like to visit the town, presumably somewhere in France. Also, I was in Europe one year during the NBA playoffs and got very frustrated when I couldn't always get the scores. Is there any way to keep up with American sports over there? _ R.J., Newport News, Va.

A. The statue's home town, Colmar, is a well-preserved old city of about 70,000, a delightful place in the Alsace region of eastern France, surrounded by vineyards. It is a fine place to visit.

Colmar escaped World War II bombing, leaving intact its ancient center with alley-wide streets lined with half-timbered, tile-roofed houses adorned with carvings and ornamentation. In all, 45 buildings are classified as historical monuments. Motor vehicles are banned or limited in much of the center. Prepare to walk a lot.

The house where sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi was born and where he lived and worked, in the center of the old town, is now the Bartholdi Museum. It retains his family's furniture and his souvenirs, such as watercolors and photos from his journey to Egypt. There are statues, busts, rough drafts, plaster casts and models of his work, including first models of the Statue of Liberty, then called Liberty Enlightening the World.

The statue's model was his mother, which is only fair since his mother supported him for much of his life.

The statue was conceived in 1856 as a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States. Every penny was contributed by citizens and private benefactors on both sides of the Atlantic.

Bartholdi, chosen to design and construct it, began in 1875 working with a plaster mold 4 feet high. The statue was not completed until 1884. The structural iron skeleton was designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.