“Les Elégantes” have been renovated in Marseille.
-
NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
The Elegant have regained their splendor.
40 meters high, they stand on the sea walls of the port of Marseille, facing the Mediterranean: five cranes, witnesses of the city's industrial and maritime past, have just been renovated and can now proudly bear their nickname of "Elegant" .
Commissioned in 1961 to support the development of the activity of the first port in France, the cranes, unused for years and whose steel structures had been damaged by the spray, underwent a "facelift" for three years .
More than a million euros
These impressive steel structures resembling giraffes with their arrows rising in the azure sky like long necks, have been covered with a gray paint while the command cabins have been enhanced in blue.
An investment of more than one million euros, financed by the Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur region (400,000 euros) and the Grand maritime port of Marseille (600,000 euros), was necessary to renovate these iconic industrial tools. which mark motorists as soon as they enter the city via the A55 motorway.
Symbols of Marseille's industrial heritage, the five cranes weighing 72 to 110 tonnes each had already survived the reinforcement in 2001. These lifting devices were capable of lifting a load of six tonnes up to a reach of 22 meters and had been designed on measurement for the Phocaean port.
Justice
Marseille: "All my life, I have been exemplary straightforwardness", proclaims Jean-Noël Guérini at the helm.
Sport
OM: New organization of the sports sector, overseen by Pablo Longoria
Harbor
Tourism
Industry
Heritage