The Eiffel Tower is to get a fresh coat of brown paint for its 120th birthday, but will stay open to the public throughout the 18-month makeover, operators have said
The Eiffel Tower is to get a fresh coat of brown paint for its 120th birthday, but will stay open to the public throughout the 18-month makeover, operators have said.
Two dozen mountaineer-painters will coat the Paris monument in 60 tonnes of environmentally-friendly paint, in a specially-mixed hue called Eiffel Tower Brown, chosen to blend well with the city landscape.
Applied in three shades from very dark to light at the top, it will be the 19th paint job for the landmark, which gets a new coat every seven years.
Soaring 324 m above the Paris skyline, the tower is the world's most visited tourist attraction, drawing some six million people each year. In the past the tower has gone from reddish brown to ochre-brown, yellow, brownish-yellow and dark red, before operators settled in 1968 on the current colour. "This is the colour that suits the tower bestu00a0-- its most elegant dress," Jean-Bernard Bros, head of the company that operates the tower, told reporters.
"That is what filmmakers, photographers, lovers of Paris, all those who love the Eiffel Tower have been telling us for 40 years -- so we have decided to keep the brown for good," he said.
Designed by the engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built for the 1889 universal exhibition in Paris and was initially dismissed as an eyesore by many Parisians.
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