Suffering, the Iron Lady?
The direction of the Eiffel Tower denies.
The structure
"has never been as preserved as now"
with a 20th painting campaign whose addition has almost tripled, its management assured AFP on Monday after press articles questioning the maintenance of the monument.
The 133-year-old Iron Lady
"will continue to stand with this impeccable iron"
, assured Patrick Branco Ruivo, the general manager of the Société d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (Sete), stressing that the campaign of ongoing painting since 2019 aimed to
“treat and protect it”
.
According to the weekly
Marianne
, several reports written between 2010 and 2016 warn of damage caused by rust and maintenance defects.
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High-flying work
"For the first time in its history, we stripped the tower, that is to say, we removed all the layers of paint"
on the south arch located above the Champ-de-Mars , and
"we discovered that the wrought iron was impeccable when we were in the most damaged part"
by rust, answers Patrick Branco Ruivo.
This part of the operation is now complete with the dismantling of scaffolding weighing 450 tons, higher than the Arc de Triomphe, which must be completed by the fireworks on July 14.
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It was this stripping that brought out, at the start of 2021, the presence of lead in the previous layers of paint, and led to the suspension of work for eight months.
The delay and the change of method resulted in almost tripling the cost of the project, from 32 to 84 million, according to the general manager.
If the stripping concerns only 5% of the monument,
"there is 15% of the structure which, for the first time, is really taken in depth, as recommended by a report"
, he underlines.
As for the more than 800 defects mentioned by
Marianne
, out of 18,000 pieces, these are mostly pieces that had not received the maximum score, assures the director.
"The 68 elements that were the subject of an alert were secondary elements"
, such as angles, he adds.
Their progressive replacement is in progress.
Among the most visited monuments in the world, engineer Gustave Eiffel's masterpiece returned to pre-Covid attendance levels in early 2022, with more than 20,000 visitors per day.