Nelson's Column came out of its enforced hibernation today after the four month, £420,000 restoration work on old Horatio was finally completed.
The occassion was marked by "four dancers going through their paces atop the granite column 151 feet (46 metres) above London's Trafalgar Square," which isn't as weird as it sounds when you realise that today is also the beginning of the Big Dance festival.
As part of his makeover Nelson got his left arm (struck by lightning in the 1880s) repaired and the bronze straps removed. And for all you statue repair geeks out there, we can tell you that previously unavailable Craigleith stone, salvaged during a restoration of Donaldson's School for the Deaf, an A-listed building in Edinburgh, was used to restore the arm.
A laser survey was carried out in order to check the dimensions of Nelson's Column (fnar, fnar) which reveales that poor old Nel' is actually shorter than we all thought: he actually stands "at just over 169ft (51.5m) when measured from street level to the top of the Nelson statue."
Image taken from the flickr stream of Nick Atkins Photography.
