France mourns Diana five years on

Mourners continue to take Paris' unofficial memorial to the princess to heart

PARIS, France -- A Paris memorial that became an unofficial altar to Diana, Princess of Wales has undergone a spruce up in time for the fifth anniversary of her fatal crash.

A monument depicting the "Flame of Liberty" became inundated with flowers, messages and graffiti from tens of thousands of mourners wanting to pay their respects to the late "people's princess," killed in a road accident at the Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

But the gold-plated flame, originally donated by the International Herald Tribune newspaper in 1987 as a token of French-American friendship, became dirty over the years.

Now the city officials have torn off the tatty pieces of paper and photographs and cleaned the monument at the tunnel's entrance, giving it steel barricades for protection from the hundreds of visitors who still flock daily to the site.

Paris authorities had set aside an educational garden with herbs and flowers in the Marais district of the city as an official site to reflect the princess' love of children, but it was the site where she died that drew mourners.

Diana, the former wife of Britain's heir to the throne, died along with her companion Dodi Fayed and the chauffeur Henri Paul during a high speed car crash with the paparazzi on August 31, 1997.

"We saw the monument was dirty all the time, so after the cleanup, we put barriers around it to stop people from writing graffiti on it," Yolande Taurel, a spokeswoman for Paris City Hall, told The Associated Press.

But the results have met with mixed reaction. Some tourists are disappointed not to see the personal messages and momentos but others see the creation of an altar as morbid.

The UK chooses a memorial

The UK has been slow to endorse an official memorial site, only agreeing to a large oval stone-ringed fountain at the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London, last month.

The design, by Kathryn Gustafson, has come in for criticism with some detractors and friends saying it resembles more "a puddle" rather than a water feature.

It will not be opened until August 2003 -- the sixth anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

In 2000, a seven-mile commemorative walkway through the capital's Royal Parks and a memorial playground in Kensington Gardens were dedicated to Diana.

And a memorial to Diana exists at her family's Althorp estate, in central England, where she is buried.

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund has been a more successful and lasting memorial in the UK, raising £50 million for charities close to the princesses' heart including anti-land mines clearance and humanitarian work in Africa.

Dr. Andrews Purkins, chief executive for the fund, said: "With our inspiring name, we can make a unique contribution to changing the lives of some of the most disadvantaged people in the UK and overseas. We feel this is the best possible memorial to Diana."