With the 2024 Olympic Games drawing near, Paris's most famous landmark is preparing for the occasion: the Eiffel Tower will be painted a brilliant gold-brown color to become the iconic image of the Summer Games. According to the French magazine Marianne, the process of removing a percentage of the subsequent layers of paint and adding a new one is estimated to cost around 60 million euros.
The Eiffel Tower, the 324-meter-high wrought-iron structure designed by Gustave Eiffel in the 19th century, is one of the most iconic and visited tourist sites in the world, with around six million visitors per year.
The work to strip and repaint the monument began in 2019 but the works were interrupted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, thus delaying the process. At the moment it is unknown if the paint coat will be finished in time. On this occasion, instead of painting a new layer every 7 years as usual, it has been decided to remove all paint coatings from the last 130 years weighing more than 350 tons.
Painting is essential for the conservation of the tower, because without it the monument suffers from corrosion. Being built of wrought iron, the tower is supposedly protected against rust with several layers of paint, which is a guarantee of its durability. That is why the repainting campaign started in 2018 tries to find out the current state of wrought iron by removing all layers of paint.
Some confidential reports published in the aforementioned magazine show that, due to delays in the works, ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, it will not be possible to complete the necessary work to maintain the tower. They also suggest that the monument is in poor condition and riddled with rust.
Of the 30% that was planned to strip the monument and apply new paint, now only 5% will be removed. The magazine values this change as "a job poorly done", which is "dangerously aging" the monument, further affecting its corrosion problem.
