23rd G8 Summit

The 23rd G8 summit was held from June 20 to 22, 1997 in Denver, Colorado, United States. The venue was the newly constructed Denver Public Library in downtown Denver. The locations of previous G8 summits to have been hosted by the United States include: San Juan, Puerto Rico (1976); Williamsburg, Virginia (1983); and Houston, Texas.

The Group of Seven (G7) was an unofficial forum which brought together the heads of the richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada starting in 1976. The G8, meeting for the first time in 1997, was formed with the addition of Russia. In addition, the President of the European Commission has been formally included in summits since 1981. The summits were not meant to be linked formally with wider international institutions; and in fact, a mild rebellion against the stiff formality of other international meetings was a part of the genesis of cooperation between France's President Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as they conceived the initial summit of the Group of Six (G6) in 1975.