Diana Fountain, Granite fountain in Hyde Park, City of Westminster, United Kingdom.
The Diana Fountain is a memorial fountain in Hyde Park, in the London borough of City of Westminster. It takes the form of an oval granite channel, open to the sky, through which water flows in two directions before meeting at the lowest point in a shallow pool.
The fountain was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on July 6, 2004, about seven years after the death of Princess Diana. The inauguration brought together the Windsor and Spencer families in public for the first time since that event.
The fountain sits in an open part of Hyde Park where people gather around the water's edge on warm days. Children often wade in the shallow stream while others sit on the grass nearby, making it a social spot rather than a formal monument.
The fountain is open throughout the year and sits in the southern part of Hyde Park, not far from the Serpentine Gallery. The stone edges can be slippery when wet, so sturdy footwear is a good idea, especially for children.
The granite was quarried in Cornwall, then shipped to Northern Ireland where computer-controlled machines cut each of the roughly 545 pieces to exact shapes before the whole assembly was transported by sea to London. This process made it possible to carve surface details along the channel, such as smooth chutes and rough cascades, that hand tools alone could not have produced.
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