France’s Eiffel Tower, one of the world’s most famous landmarks, will get a glass wall built round its base under a plan to provide extra protection against terrorist attacks, a source in the Paris mayor’s office said on Thursday.
“We have three aims: improve the look, make access easier and strengthen the protection of visitors and staff,” Jean-Francois Martins, a city official, said in a statement.
A glass wall 2.5 meters high will be erected around the Eiffel Tower in Paris this autumn, part of a multi-million dollar plan to prevent attacks on the iconic monument. The cost of the project will be around $21.36 million, le Parisien newspaper said.
The 324-metre-high structure, which gets about seven million visitors a year, already has protective metal fencing around its base, erected temporarily for the Euro football championship of 2016.
“The terror threat remains high in Paris and the most vulnerable sites, led by the Eiffel Tower, must be the object of special security measures,” said deputy mayor Jean-Francois Martins.
The wall will prevent individuals or vehicles storming the site visited by six million people each year, he added.
Security has been boosted after a series of terror attacks that killed at least 238 people around France between January 2015 and July 2016.
France has been hit by attacks including bombings and shootings in Paris in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed, all of which staged by radicalized extremists.
Glass panels two-and-a-half meters high would be erected around the base of the tower as an anti-terrorist measure if the plans are approved, the source said. The project would go before a sites commission and then the environment ministry.
Asharq Al-Awsat English
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