Although the work began in 2019, an interruption, due to the health crisis and the discovery of high levels of lead in the successive layers of paint, caused significant delays.
For its twentieth painting campaign since 1889, the Eiffel Tower will not be completely ready to offer its most beautiful golden adornment to the many visitors expected for the Paris Olympics in 2024. If the work began in 2019, an interruption due to the crisis of sanitation and the discovery of high levels of lead in the successive coats of paint caused significant delays.
For an estimated amount of 85 million euros, the Iron Lady must be entirely covered by hand by 2026 with 50 tons of paint. But the construction site is complicated: the monument continues to be open to visitors throughout the duration of the work to finance it. Interrupted for nine months in 2020, it only really resumed in January 2022, the fault of Covid-19 therefore and the detection of high levels of lead in the multiple layers of rusty paint, when scouring the parts. damaged.
From now on, the workers who work on this campaign are equipped with filtering masks and must submit to daily decontamination showers. The town hall of Paris, which manages the building via Sete, the operating company of the Eiffel Tower, hoped for an end of the work for the Games. The objective will not be achieved and a new interruption has been decided: the construction site will again be put on hold during the Olympic Games and will only resume once the competition is over.
