Paris Mayor Wants to Keep the Olympic Rings on the Eiffel Tower

The Olympics ended in mid-August, and the Paralympics will conclude in a few days—but that doesn’t mean Paris is ready for the excitement to end. The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has announced that the famous Olympic rings will remain on the Eiffel Tower.

“I want to keep this festive spirit alive!” Hidalgo tells Ouest-France’s Cyril Petit and Stéphane Vernay, per a translation by the New York Times’ Aurelien Breeden. “As mayor of Paris, the decision is mine.”

Not everyone agrees with the mayor’s decision. Already, a Change.org petition demanding that the rings get taken down once the Paralympics end has garnered over 38,000 signatures. The descendants of engineer Gustave Eiffel, who designed the tower, have also pushed back against the move.

“We do not think it appropriate that the Eiffel Tower … should be permanently associated with an external organization, whatever its prestige,” says the family in a statement, per a translation by CNN’s Niamh Kennedy, Christian Edwards and Saskya Vandoorne. They add that the tower is “not intended as an advertising platform.”

The city installed the rings—which are 95 feet wide and 43 feet tall—in July before the Olympics. Originally, the plan was to take them down in September.

To complicate matters, keeping the colorful rings on the tower is actually going to take more work than removing them. The existing fixture is too heavy to remain on the monument long-term, and it will need to be replaced with a lighter version.

“We have so many questions not resolved yet because the original rings were heavy and built for temporary times, so we’ll bring them down and create new ones to keep them for a long time,” Pierre Rabadan, Paris’ deputy mayor, tells CNN.

The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, and city leaders originally planned to dismantle it after 20 years. At the time, artists heavily criticized the structure, protesting “the erection in the very heart of our capital of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower,” per the tower’s website. Writer Guy de Maupassant called it a “giant ungainly skeleton” and a “ridiculous, skinny, factory chimney stack.”

Today, the tower is now embraced as the city’s most recognizable landmark. In 1991, it became a UNESCO World Heritage site.

As with any major change to a beloved monument, the choice is leaving many divided. To some, the addition is welcome. “The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful; the rings add color,” a woman named Solène tells France Bleu, per BBC News’ Jaroslav Lukiv. “It’s very nice to see it like this.”

To others, however, it’s a blight. “It’s a historic monument. Why defile it with rings?” a resident named Manon tells the French broadcaster. “It was good for the Olympics, but now it’s over. We can move on. Maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before.”

Rachida Dati, France’s culture minister, is urging officials to proceed with caution. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), she argued that the government should ensure that the plan is in compliance with heritage regulations.

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Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.