Installation and Commissioning of FLAMES, the VLT Multifibre Facility

FLAMES (Fibre Large Array MultiElement Spectrograph) is the VLT FibreFacility, installed and commissioned atthe Nasmyth A focus of UT2 (KueyenTelescope). FLAMES was built and as-sembled in about four years through aninternational collaboration between teninstitutes in six countries and three con-tinents. It had first light with the fibre linkto the red arm of UVES on April 1, andwith the GIRAFFE spectrograph on