(Paris) With more than 5.8 million visitors in 2022, the Eiffel Tower has returned to a level of attendance close to 2019 and before the health crisis, like the other major Parisian monuments, said Friday its operating company (Sete).
“With 5.849 million visitors welcomed, 2022 marks the undisputed return of international visitors,” said La Sete in a press release.
La Dame de Fer, which had welcomed up to 7 million visitors in 2014 and another 6.2 million in 2019, had to close from mid-March to the end of June 2020, during the first confinement, then again from the end of October 2020 mid-July 2021.
Opened only five and a half months in 2021, it had welcomed 2.1 million visitors that year.
In 2022, nearly half of its visitors came from Europe, specifies La Sete: in the lead, Italy and Spain (8%), followed by Germany and the United Kingdom (7%) then Belgium and the Netherlands (2%).
The Americans, who made a massive return to the capital in 2022, “alone accounted for around 11%” of entries, adds La Sete.
On Thursday, the major Parisian museums had also announced attendances up sharply compared to 2021, and tending to return to 2019 levels: 7.8 million for the Louvre, 6.9 for the Palace of Versailles, 3 for the museum d’Orsay or the Center Pompidou…
In addition to the return of foreign tourists, the year 2022 was marked, for the Eiffel Tower, by the installation of a radio antenna at its summit, making it now culminate at 330 m, six more than before. As well as the opening of a new restaurant run by starred chef Thierry Marx.
But the Eiffel Tower has also been at the center of several controversies: the felling of trees that was to entail the construction of small buildings, finally abandoned in the face of the excitement aroused, the insecurity linked to the return of tourists, the traces of lead revealed by the paint job in progress…
The president of the Sete Jean-François Martins wants the year 2023 to be placed “under the sign of the celebration of Gustave Eiffel and his genius, on the occasion of the centenary of his disappearance”, he said in the press release.