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History lovers visiting Paris might have made a plan to check out the Eiffel Tower<\/a> on Wednesday. After all, it was the 100th anniversary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the eponymous civil engineer whose company designed and built it.<\/p>\n But the sign they discovered by the landmark bore grim tidings: \u201cLa Tour Eiffel est actuellement ferm\u00e9e.\u201d The tower was closed.<\/p>\n The reason will be familiar to anyone who has spent significant time in France: a labor action.<\/p>\n Tourists could mill about on the Esplanade, the ground-level area around the base of the tower. But they could not spend the 28.3 euros it costs to take an elevator to the top, nor pay the discounted rate of \u20ac21.5 for those hardy souls willing to climb the stairs roughly half of the way.<\/p>\n Topping out at 1,083 feet, or about three-quarters of the height of the Empire State Building including its spire, the tower attracts six million to seven million tourists a year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Easily visible from almost anywhere in Paris, it supposedly inspired a quip from de Maupassant or Flaubert or Balzac or William Morris<\/a>. Whomever of these writers it was dined frequently at the Tower, and when asked why replied, perhaps apocryphally: \u201cIt\u2019s the only place in Paris where I can\u2019t see the thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The Conf\u00e9d\u00e9ration g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du travail, the union representing workers at the tower, did not respond to a request for comment, but was quoted by the BBC<\/a> saying that the tower\u2019s operators were \u201cheading for disaster,\u201d and called its economic plans \u201coverambitious and untenable\u201d because they underestimated the costs of its maintenance and renovation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A show of son et lumi\u00e8re \u2014 sound and light \u2014 to celebrate the anniversary will go on as scheduled.<\/p>\n Completed in 1889 by Eiffel and his engineers and construction workers to commemorate another 100th anniversary \u2014 the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution \u2014 the tower has hardly stayed out of the news since.<\/p>\n Most recently, it popped up in international headlines when two American tourists were found to have spent the night<\/a> in it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Eiffel Tower was also closed in March, as were many other sites including the Louvre, as a result of sweeping labor protests<\/a> over a law raising the retirement age to 64 from 62.<\/p>\n The tower was expected to reopen on Thursday, so tourists can again take in the view that has entranced visitors for more than a century.<\/p>\n But they will have to hurry. The price goes up to \u20ac29.40 on Jan. 1.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n