Fate of Eiffel Tower’s Olympic rings turns into political battle – POLITICO

“She has shown a lot of political opportunism,” Alphand said. “The Eiffel Tower is not made to hang anything and everything on it.”

Paris 2024 convinced the French public to host the Games by promising to make them the “greenest in history,” promising to use mostly existing infrastructure for sustainability purposes and to keep costs from spiraling out of control. Many of the temporary venues were built in the heart of the city, so iconic monuments like the Eiffel Tower became part of the backdrop for events like the opening ceremony or beach volleyball.

After the Games, these temporary structures would have to be dismantled and the centre of Paris would largely return to its former state.

Hidalgo’s camp has so far fended off criticism other than the typical complaints of Parisians, who are notoriously wary of change in the French capital. I.M. Pei’s pyramids outside the Louvre were lambasted after they were installed in the 1980s, and even the tower itself, built by engineer Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 World’s Fair, was initially opposed by architects and residents. Novelist Guy de Maupassant called it a “gigantic, ungainly skeleton” and is said to have only liked to eat lunch there because it was the only place in Paris from which he could not see it.

Today, more than a century later, the Eiffel Tower is an almost universally beloved monument synonymous with France. Many, including Eiffel’s descendants, want it to remain untouched.

“The rings completely break the design of the monument … it does not respect the work of our ancestor,” Olivier Berthelot-Eiffel, a great-great-grandson of Gustave Eiffel, told POLITICO. Berthelot-Eiffel is president of an association of Eiffel’s descendants, which has opposed Hidalgo’s move.