The Eiffel Tower is rusting and in desperate need of repair, according to leaked documents.
The iconic 133-year-old Paris landmark is undergoing a repainting costing 60 million euros ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games, but more substantial repairs are needed, according to leaked documents obtained by French magazine Marianne.
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“It is simple: If Gustave Eiffel visited the place, he would have a heart attack,” an unnamed manager at the tower told the magazine.
The paint job the 1,063-foot iron structure is getting is purely cosmetic work, according to the report, and experts say the tower needs to be stripped to the metal, repaired, and then repainted in order to stop the corrosion from worsening.
The monument’s face-lift is the 20th time the tower will be repainted, but delays caused by COVID-19 and the presence of high levels of lead in older paint layers have reduced the scope of the repairs. Initially, 30% of the tower was scheduled to be repainted, but now only 5% of the structure will be stripped of old paint and repainted, according to Marianne.
An expert told the French outlet that the limited scope of the tower’s latest makeover could make the rust problem even worse.
“At best, it will be mostly useless, but at the very worst, it will make the defects in the existing layer of paint worse and result in corrosion,” the expert said.
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The Societe d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, the company that oversees the tower, is reluctant to close it for lengthy repairs because of the tourist revenue that would be lost, according to the report.
The tower was erected by Eiffel, a French engineer, in 1889 for the Paris world’s fair. The monument receives over 7 million visitors per year, 75% of whom are foreign tourists, according to the city.
