Sites of memory (lieux de mémoire) refer to any place, object, or concept vested with historical significance in the popular collective memory. What historian Pierre Nora has termed lieux de mémoire can be material or nonmaterial in nature, such as a monument, museum, event, or symbol. Sites of memory are important because they create a bond to the past within the present reality, bringing the past, and emotions associated with the past, to the forefront of consciousness. The definition and significance of memory is in contrast to that of history. While memory is rooted in the present by the people, places, and things who maintain it, history is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer; a mere representation of the past.