Since its construction, it has been an icon of Europe and an unquestionable symbol of love. Proof of this is the tens of thousands of photos of kisses under her umbrella that are uploaded to Instagram each year. A mandatory visit for tourists traveling to Paris and one of the monuments that receives the most visitors: 6 million a year. Curious is that when it was finished in 1889 it was expected to last 20 years before being dismantled. Today, 133 years later, it is still standing. Something that could change very soon.
Several leaked confidential reports suggest that the monument is in poor condition and full of rust. And that it needs an urgent repair or one day we will have to say goodbye.
It is not enough to put a patch. The stir arises after the French magazine Marianne has published several leaked confidential reports suggesting that the monument is in a very bad state, rusting to the core. It is stated in them that the tower needs a complete repair, but instead it is only being given a facelift (a €60m lick of paint) for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. This is the twentieth painting campaign that has been applied to it and it could be not only the most expensive, but also the most inefficient.
Experts argue that the metal of the tower must be removed, repaired and repainted afterwards. But above all, painting over old paint makes corrosion worse. “If Gustave Eiffel visited the place, he would have a heart attack,” an anonymous expert explained to the magazine.
reports. Since 2010, various reports have warned of maintenance defects and the extent of the damage. One from 2010 read: “Sete (the company that manages it) must take another look at the tower and propose a completely new maintenance policy focused on the aging metal structure.” A second 2014 report from Expiris, an expert paint company, suggested that the tower had cracks and rust and that only 10% of the newer paint on the tower was adhered to the structure. A third report in 2016 found 884 flaws, including 68 that posed “a risk to the durability of the structure.”
The context. The monument is quite a colossus. It is no less than 324 meters high and weighs 7,300 tons. According to this Guardian article, it was built using cast iron, invented in Britain during the Industrial Revolution through a process that produced higher-quality, purer wrought iron by removing carbon in the melting process. Before its inauguration, four coats of red lead paint were applied, now banned but then considered the best anti-corrosion.
Eiffel, the engineer whose company designed and built the monument, warned at the time that the most important thing would be to identify and stop the spread of rust to maintain its longevity and suggested that it would need to be painted every seven years: “Paint is the essential ingredient to protect a metal structure and its only guarantee of longevity. The most important thing is to prevent the onset of rust.”
The company does not want to close it. However, despite the reports, Sete, the company that manages and supervises the care of the tower and which is owned by the city council, has no intention of closing it for the tourist income they obtain from it. These represent a whopping 52 million euros (which is what they lost during the year of Covid).
Now, the truth is that the situation does not look good. By dint of procrastinating and putting on a cloak to hide botched maintenance, the outcome could be disastrous. What is not done seriously today could have a high price tomorrow. It is hard to imagine Paris without its imposing Eiffel Tower on the Champs de Mars.
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