Paris (AFP)
The ballet of visitors has been replaced by that of painters and the flashes of telephones by the scraping of scrapers: at almost 132 years old, the Eiffel Tower is getting the biggest facelift in its history in the run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games.
For her 20th painting campaign, the famous Iron Lady, one of the most visited monuments in the world in the pre-Covid era, did not do things by halves: exit, on the south arc, the 19 previous coats of paint up to 3 mm thick.
Exit also the color "Brown Eiffel Tower" which covered since 1968 the building of 324 meters, symbol of Paris with Notre-Dame and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre.
The Tower, which was originally red when it was presented at the 1889 World's Fair, will regain the "yellow-brown" color desired by Gustave Eiffel in 1907.
"It will give a little more + gold + side to the Eiffel Tower at the time of the Olympics compared to the color we used to see", underlines Patrick Branco Ruivo, general manager of Sete, the company of operation of the monument.
“We can already see the new color when we look at the top. It's not revolutionary, but when there is a beautiful blue sky over Paris, we see some metallic, shiny effects”, adds- he does.
- Reinforced protocol -
Started in 2019 for an end scheduled in November 2022, the site - stripping and painting - is titanic given the 18,000 parts connected by 2.5 million rivets.
Costed at 50 million euros, the operation required a reinforced sanitary protocol for the stripping given the presence of lead in the previous paints.
In addition to specific equipment and decontamination areas, around fifty samples per week were added on the site and in the various areas of the Tower, lists Alain Dumas, technical director of Sete.
"We are extremely careful in terms of safety, it is our priority", he assures, a few weeks after the publication of an article reporting three readings above normal.
"A week later, we took another measurement at the locations indicated and we had completely satisfactory values below the required threshold".
The stripping only concerns 2% of the structure at this stage and focuses on the arch which overlooks the Champ-de-Mars, the most subject to wind, rain and sun, and in fact the most degraded.
A degradation foreseen by Gustave Eiffel who had himself recommended to renew the coat of paint every seven years.
A rhythm that has been respected since, with a change of nuance this year.
"Why did Gustave Eiffel choose the color yellow-brown? No doubt so that the Eiffel Tower echoes the whole of the great city of Paris, a city of freestone, of limestone", emphasizes Pierre -Antoine Gatier, chief architect of historical monuments.
- Tree climbing -
Several hundred meters above the ground, equipped with harnesses, tools and a paint pot, painters move from one room to another.
Suspended by ropes, they revolve around the 20,000 small lamps that make the Tower sparkle every evening at nightfall for five minutes every hour.
"We move most of the time as on a tree climbing course", explains Antoine Olhagaray, a 22-year-old rope painter.
With "an extra view", complete by his side Charles-Henry Piret: "We do not have the opportunity every day to be suspended on a rope 300 m high".
Do they have the impression of being, almost 70 years later, the descendants of the painter of the Eiffel Tower immortalized by Marc Riboud in 1953?
"We are in continuity", estimates Charles-Henry who says he is ready to "reproduce this photo version 2021".
With one difference: they would pose restrained by ropes when their "ancestor" posed nonchalantly, cigarette in the beak and hat on the head, holding in one hand a brush and in the other a pillar of the Tower, the city to its feet.
© 2021 AFP