History buffs visiting Paris can make a plan to see The eiffel tower on Wednesday. After all, it is the 100th anniversary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the eponymous civil engineer whose company designed and built it.
But the sign they discovered of the landmark gave sad news: “La Tour Eiffel est actuellement fermée.” The tower is closed.
The reason will be familiar to anyone who has spent significant time in France: a labor action.
Tourists can walk around the Esplanade, the ground level around the base of the tower. But they can’t spend the 28.3 euro cost to take the elevator to the top, or pay the discounted price of €21.5 for those hardy souls willing to climb the stairs about half way.
Topping out at 1,083 feet, or about three-quarters the height of the Empire State Building with its spire, the tower attracts six million to seven million tourists a year.
Easily visible from almost anywhere in Paris, it is said to have been inspired by a quip from de Maupassant or Flaubert or Balzac or William Morris. Any of these writers often dined at the Tower, and when asked why answered, perhaps apocryphally: “It is the only place in Paris where I could not see the thing.”
The Confédération générale du travail, the union representing tower workers, did not respond to a request for comment, but quoted by the BBC saying the tower’s operators were “heading for disaster,” and called its economic plans “overly ambitious and unsustainable” because they underestimated its maintenance and renovation costs.
A show of son et lumière — sound and light — to celebrate the anniversary will go ahead as scheduled.
Completed in 1889 by Eiffel and his engineers and construction workers to commemorate another 100th anniversary – the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution – the tower has barely been out of the news since.
Recently, it made international headlines when two American tourists were found to have spent the night here.
The Eiffel Tower was also closed in March, as were many other sites including the Louvre, as a result of mass protests by workers over a law that raised the retirement age to 64 from 62.
The tower is expected to reopen on Thursday, allowing tourists to once again see the sight that has drawn visitors for more than a century.
But they have to hurry. The price will increase to €29.40 on January 1.
