foreign chronicles
An investigative report from a French magazine sounds the alarm about the state of conservation of the emblematic monument, which is being rehabilitated for the 2024 Paris Olympics with the twentieth painting campaign in its 133-year history
Oblivious to the hordes of tourists, painters, attached to harnesses and cables, move along one of the Eiffel Tower’s pillars armed with buckets and brushes to clean, apply rust-proofing and hand-paint the wrought-iron structure. With the naked eye, from the ground, you can see some rusty parts of the monument due to inclement weather.
An investigative report from the magazine ‘Marianne’ on the poor state of conversation of the monument, built 133 years ago by Gustave Eiffel on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1889, has raised alarms in Paris this summer. “We have seen Notre-Dame burn, will we see the Eiffel Tower fall?” The magazine wondered in a sensationalist tone, which assures that, if Gustave Eiffel visited the monument, he “would suffer a syncope.”
According to ‘Marianne’, citing confidential reports, the Eiffel Tower is “in a sorry state”, “eaten by rust” and “its maintenance leaves much to be desired”. The magazine criticizes that, instead of attacking the structural problems that ‘the Iron Lady’ has, it is only being given a cosmetic coat of paint to cover up its ailments.
The structure shows high levels of oxidation /
From the Exploitation Society of the Eiffel Tower (SETE) they deny this alarmist information. The Eiffel Tower “has never been as well preserved as it is now,” Patrick Branco Ruivo, general director of SETE, told the AFP agency, who assures that the monument “will continue to stand with this impeccable iron.”
“For the first time in its history, we have stripped the tower, that is, we have removed all the layers of paint” from the arch located on the Champs de Mars, which was the most damaged, explains Ruivo. “We have discovered that the puddled iron was impeccable, despite the fact that it was the most damaged part” due to rust, adds the director general of SETE. Until now, what was done was to apply one layer of paint on top of another.
Ruivo specifies that, of the 68 alert points cited in the report, “we have already treated six and we are going to continue treating the others.” According to the person in charge of SETE, of the 800 defects that, according to the magazine ‘Marianne’, have been detected in 18,000 metallic pieces, the majority are fragments that had not received the maximum mark.
“Behind that paint that peels off, flakes off, that is irregular, the iron chosen by Gustave Eiffel is in an excellent state of conservation,” Pierre-Antoine Gatier, chief architect of the historical monuments, confirmed to the TF1 television network.
Gustave Eiffel, in his work ‘The Tower of 300 meters’, insisted in 1900 on “the importance of painting in the conservation of a metal work and that the more meticulous the painting work, the longer its useful life”.
One coat of paint every 7 years
For this reason, the Eiffel Tower is painted every seven years on average to protect it from rust. Since 1968, she wore ‘Eiffel Tower brown’, a color similar to bronze and specially designed for her. Since its construction, it has changed color several times, going from the reddish-brown of its inauguration to the brownish-red of the 1950s.
Looking ahead to the 2024 Olympic Games, the Eiffel Tower will shine again, after this twentieth painting campaign, the ‘yellow-brown’ color that it had in 1907. That was the color that Gustave Eiffel wanted when it was decided that he was going to preserve the Eiffel Tower after the Universal Exhibition, instead of dismantling it, as was originally planned.
As in the days of civil engineering, paint is still applied by hand. And the paint fades in three shades, from lightest at the top to darkest at the bottom, to ensure an even color perception against the Parisian sky.
Despite its ailments, the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of France and Paris, continues to be a magnet for tourists. In the middle of high season, finding a ticket to climb to the top on the monument’s website is impossible these days, so many tourists have to settle for seeing the views of Paris from the second floor of the emblematic place.
With almost 7 million visitors a year, the Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world. It currently welcomes around 20,000 visitors a day, the same level of attendance it had before the coronavirus pandemic. Since its opening in 1889, it has already received more than 300 million visitors.
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