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Eiffel Tower – stairs, elevators, and sale of part of the original staircase

  


 

The Eiffel Tower in Paris is 131 years old. On Tuesday 1 December 2020, part of the original spiral staircase sold at auction. A 14-step chunk of the Eiffel Tower's spiral staircase was sold for 274,475 euros (US $328,427), nearly ten times the guide price, at the Artcurial auction house in Paris.The price was not a record for a piece of the staircase. In 2016, a piece on sale at Artcurial reached 523,800 euros at auction.

 

The nearly three-metre-high artefact was part of the original 1889 staircase that connected the second and third floors of the Eiffel Tower for nearly a century before an elevator (lift) was installed in 1983. The staircase was taken down and cut up into 24 chunks.

 

Twenty pieces of the staircase were sold to private collections, three were given to French museums, and the last was put on display on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower, also known as the Iron Lady. 

 

Today, parts of the staircase can be found next to the Statue of Liberty in New York and at the Yoshii Foundation in Japan.

 

Engineer Gustave Eiffel built the 324-metre (1,062 feet) Eiffel Tower for the 1889 World Fair in Paris.

 

Due to the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, there are currently no visitors at the Eiffel Tower, one of the most visited attractions in the world. Lockdown is expected to be lifted in Paris on 15 December 2020, but visitors will not be permitted to use the elevators. They have to use the stairs due to concerns about covid-19 infections.

 

When it was closed during the first lockdown from March 2020 for three months, it was the site’s longest period out of action since the Second World War from 1939-1945.

 

A series of safety measures will now be in place. Visitors will not be able to go any higher than the second level of the tower, and access will only be via the staircases. The elevators, with their confined spaces, represent a risk of disease transmission.

 

There will also be a one-way traffic system on the staircases, and all visitors over the age of 11 will be required to wear a face covering.A stringent cleaning operation will also be in place. “There is a new protocol,” said Eiffel Tower hygiene consultant Alain Miralles. “The day cleaning teams will be able to clean all the points of contact every two hours, from the opening of the site to its closing.”

 

Tourists planning to visit the Eiffel Tower are advised to book tickets online when the ticket office re-opens.

 

Paris tourism officials have expressed muted optimism about the city’s re-emergence as a travel destination. Since confinement measures were imposed in March 2020, tourism numbers have declined by about 80% compared to the same month in previous years, they say. 

 

Patrick Branco Ruivo, director of the Eiffel Tower's operating company, said that with foreign travel yet to recover from restrictions put in place to slow the pandemic, most visitors to Paris would be domestic visitors – the French public that want to take advantage of the lack of international tourists.










 




MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).


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