The Eiffel Tower, arguably the most recognizable landmark in Paris, has been closed to visitors since Wednesday due to a workers’ strike.
The closure came on the centenary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the French engineer whose company designed and built the tower for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889. The landmark is expected to play a major role in the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Eiffel Tower staff have declared a strike ahead of contract negotiations with the Paris municipal government, which owns the landmark, according to the media. France 24.
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The tower can receive up to 20,000 visitors per day, a spokesman said France 24. The Tower’s management company, SETE, has put in place an “unsustainable” business model that is “too ambitious” and too optimistic about future ticket revenue, according to leaders of the General Confederation of Labor, France’s second largest union. . while vastly underestimating the cost of maintenance and repair, second the guardian
The union claims that SETE based the budget on the Eiffel Tower attracting 7.4 million visitors a year, a figure that never reached the milestone. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, just under seven million people visited the Tower at its peak; since then, the total number of visitors has not exceeded six million.
Visitors can still visit the glass esplanade below the tower and second The New York Times, the tower is scheduled to reopen sometime Thursday. The Eiffel Tower, normally open 365 days a year, last closed in March, when many iconic sites closed during strikes related to the country’s rising retirement age.
