Descendants of the Eiffel Tower’s designer say they will fight to prevent the Olympic rings from being left on the tower, as Paris’s mayor plans.
The family of legendary engineer Gustave Eiffel say they “oppose any changes that negatively affect respect for the work” of their ancestor, adding that they had already consulted lawyers to block the change.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo plans to keep the massive multicolored rings attached to the “Dame de Fer” (“Iron Lady”) for the Paris Olympics until at least 2028, when the next Games will be held in Los Angeles.
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But the descendants claim that the symbol is “colorful, large in size, placed on the main approach road to the tower (and) creates a strong imbalance” in the shape of the tower, “significantly modifying the very clean forms of the monument.”
Keeping the rings in place would go against “the neutrality and importance acquired over the years by the Eiffel Tower, which has become the symbol of the city of Paris and even of France throughout the world,” their family association, AGDE, said in a statement Sunday.
They suggest the rings will only stay in place until “the end of 2024, marking the end of the Olympic year.”
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Completed in 1889 for the Paris Universal Exhibition and originally intended to stand for only 20 years, the 1,082-foot Eiffel Tower is owned by the city of Paris.
It is the world’s most visited monument according to its websitewhich attracts about seven million people every year – about three-quarters of them from abroad.
Among other things Eiffel designed, the website says, is the metallic structure of the Statue of Liberty.