A man who scaled the Eiffel Tower and forced the national monument to abruptly close for several hours on Monday has been taken into custody, the authorities said.
About 2,500 people were evacuated from the structure while the Paris Fire Department tried to capture the climber, officials said. By 9:30 p.m., the authorities said, they were able to reason with the man, who had been lodged for hours near the third tier of the 1,063-foot structure.
It was unclear why the man climbed the landmark. The Eiffel Tower will reopen on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., according to La Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, which runs the landmark’s official website.
Photos of the climber, whose name has not been released, quickly flooded social media on Monday afternoon, showing him more than halfway up the monument as rescue workers tried to reach him.
A spokeswoman for the tower’s operator told Reuters that the man had entered the tower normally and started to climb once he was on the second floor.
The tower’s official Twitter account announced the closing Monday afternoon. “We kindly advise our visitors to postpone their visit,” it said. The lockdown left tourists stranded at the top of the tower, and France 24 reported that the esplanade under the tower was also closed.
Representatives for the monument and the local police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
After the monument was closed, its Twitter account began responding to upset visitors. It told several tourists that prepurchased tickets would be refunded, and apologized for the inconvenience.
People have tried to climb the historic structure in the past. In 2015, James Kingston, a British climber and daredevil who has carried out many high-altitude stunts, reportedly scaled the tower.
In 2018, bulletproof glass was installed on the north and south ends of the structure to help protect it from terrorist attacks. According to NPR, the glass panels are nearly 10 feet tall and are more than two inches thick. On the east and west ends, metal fences were erected to prevent vehicles from entering.
The structure, designed by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel, was completed in 1889 and took less than two years to build. Roughly seven million people a year visit it.
Source : Nytimes
