Eiffel Tower is rusted from head to toe and in urgent need of repair, leaked reports show | Abroad

When the Eiffel Tower – the Iron Lady of Paris – was completed in 1889, it was expected to last 20 years before being demolished. One hundred and thirty years later, the tower still stands. “If Gustave Eiffel visited this place, he would have a heart attack,” an unnamed manager of the tower told Marianne.

Eiffel, the engineer who designed and built the monument with his company, said identifying and stopping rust was the biggest challenge to the life of the structure. In addition, he suggested that it should be painted every seven years. “Paint is the essential ingredient for protecting a metal structure and the care with which this is done is the only guarantee for its longevity,” he wrote at the time.

The tower is currently being repainted for 60 million euros in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games. That is the twentieth time that the monument has been repainted. A third of the tower would be stripped and then two new layers would be applied. Due to delays in the work due to Covid-19 and the presence of lead in the old paint, only 5 percent is treated. Experts told Marianne that the work was just a cosmetic facelift and predicted the end result would be “miserable”.

The company that oversees the tower, Sete, which is 99% owned by the city, is not keen on closing the tower for an extended period of time due to tourist revenue that would be lost. The tower receives about 6 million visitors in an average year, making it the fourth most visited cultural venue in France after Disneyland, the Louvre and the Palace of Versailles. The corona-imposed closure of the tower in 2020 led to a loss of income of 52 million euros.

A 2010 report said, “Sete needs to rethink the Eiffel Tower and come up with a completely new maintenance policy aimed at testing the aging metal structure.” A second report in 2014 found that the tower showed cracks and rust, and a third in 2016 found 884 defects, including 68 that would pose a risk to “the durability” of the structure.

On the tower’s website, Bertrand Lemoine, an architect and historian, paints a more optimistic picture. He says the enemy of iron is corrosion, caused by the oxidation of iron exposed to air and water. But he says that if the Eiffel Tower were repainted, it could last forever.