Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most famous landmarks, is getting a makeover which includes a paint job.
Not only will layers from the 19 previous coats of paint be removed in one of the most extensive revamp of its 130-year history, but the monument will also lose the signature “Eiffel Tower brown” it has had since 1968. It will sport a yellow-brown composition that Gustave Eiffel, the engineer whose company designed and built the tower, wanted for the monument.
Patrick Branco Ruivo, the CEO of the company operating the tower, said: “It’s going to give the Eiffel Tower a bit more of a gold hue than the colour that we’re used to seeing, in time for the Olympic Games.”
Pierre-Antoine Gatier, the chief architect for France’s historical monuments who decided on the colour change said Eiffel chose the colour so that the monument “would echo the whole city of Paris, with its cut-stone houses made of limestone.”
The renovation job for the 324-metre (1,063-foot) tower, with its 18,000 metal pieces held together by 2.5 million rivets, is monumental, coming to an estimated 50 million euros ($60 million).
The Eiffel Tower receives a new coat of paint every seven years, as much for the protection of its metallic structure from the wind, rain, sun and pollution, as for the maintenance of its looks.