Ah!
these aren't wimps to be sent 320 meters high, with a bucket of paint riveted to their bodies!
Repainting the Eiffel Tower, a very physical task,
"requires strength and concentration",
insists Dominique Niel, director of the Ateliers de France group (heritage restoration), from the site offices located at the foot of the venerable lady.
A work of balance, often executed at night and in the rain, and with a top that wobbles on windy days: the thirty painters chosen to enhance this national monument have been handpicked.
All were first sent to the Val-de-Marne, to a training center for the rope access company Jarnias, which has been working for the Eiffel Tower for thirty years.
For five long weeks, hanging from ropes, harnessed, gloved, they learned to descend from a pylon, to calculate their risks, to center their actions.
Four of them withdrew.
The others, hired by the company Monnaie France, a large…
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