They spent a night under the stars at the Eiffel Tower: two drunk American tourists were found on Monday sleeping in the famous Parisian monument where they had hidden on Sunday, police and judicial sources and the operating company said on Tuesday.
The two intruders were discovered “at dawn”, before the Tower opened to the public at 09:00, when the security guards of the Eiffel Tower operating company (Sete) made their rounds. The tourists were between the second and third floors of the Tower, in an area not accessible to the public.
They did not represent “any apparent threat”, according to the Sete. They had paid their ticket around 10:40 p.m. Sunday and jumped the barriers going downstairs, according to police.
Firefighters, including those from the specialized unit Groupe d’intervention et de reconnaissance en milieu périlleux (Grimp), came to recover them and bring them to safety, according to the same source.
“Apparently they were trapped in the place due to their alcoholism,” according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, contacted by AFP.
The two men were transferred to the 7th district police station for questioning, and the Sete indicated that it intended to file a complaint “this week”.
“As no damage has been found, the accusation of trespassing of a historical or cultural place has been dismissed,” said the prosecutor.
The Eiffel Tower reopened to the public an hour late, at around 10:00 a.m.
This is a new disruption of the tourist flow after the two evacuations on Saturday caused by two false bomb threats. The National Center for Combating Internet Hate has opened an investigation.
On Monday morning, three Paris police stations received an email again suggesting the presence of bombs at the Eiffel Tower, but La Sete, informed by the police, decided not to evacuate the monument.
