One of the largest Confederate statues still on full public display in the US is to be removed on Wednesday when the authorities take down the towering bronze depiction of General Robert E Lee from Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the confederacy.

The statue of Lee on a horse tops a huge granite base that is smothered in protest graffiti, and statue and pedestal have previously had images of George Floyd’s face and the letters BLM projected on to them since Floyd’s 2020 murder by a police officer in Minneapolis.

Protective fencing will go up on Tuesday along Monument Avenue in Richmond, where numerous other Confederate statues have already been removed. Only Lee is left, looming from the middle of a major traffic circle.