Wheelchair-bound Lebanese craftsman¹ Tufiq Daher poses next to his matchstick model of the Eiffel Tower at a mall outside Beirut on Tuesday. It took Daher four years and $11,000 to build the four-meter tower made of six million matchsticks, 6,240 tiny lamps and 23 flasher lamps.

The Eiffel Tower is to get a fresh coat of brown paint for its 120th birthday, but will stay open to the public throughout the 18-month makeover, operators said on Tuesday.

Two dozen mountaineer-painters will coat the Paris monument in 60 tons of environmentally-friendly paint, in a specially-mixed hue² called "Eiffel Tower Brown" chosen to blend well with the city landscape. It will be the 19th paint job for the landmark³, which gets a new coat every seven years.

Soaring 324 meters above the Paris skyline, the tower is the world's most visited tourist attraction, drawing some 6 million people each year.

In the past the tower has gone from reddish brown to ochre-brown, yellow, brownish-yellow and dark red, before operators settled in 1968 on the current color.

"This is the color that suits the tower best - its most elegant dress," Jean-Bernard Bros, head of the company that operates the tower, told reporters. "That is what all those who love the Eiffel Tower have been telling us for 40 years - so we have decided⁴ to keep the brown for good."

Designed by the engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built for the 1889 universal exhibition in Paris and was initially⁵ dismissed as an eyesore by many Parisians.

埃菲尔铁塔主管方于本周二称，埃菲尔铁塔将在它120岁生日之际换上棕色“新装”，不过在为期18个月的“换装”过程中，它还将对公众开放。

埃菲尔铁塔粉刷工程将由24名高空作业的油漆工完成，他们将用60吨环保涂料为这个巴黎标志性的建筑穿上“外套”，涂料的颜色“埃菲尔铁塔棕”是专门调配的，能更好地与整个城市的景观相融合。埃菲尔铁塔每七年重新粉刷一次，这是该建筑第19次粉刷。

埃菲尔铁塔高324米，高耸入巴黎天空，是世界最热门旅游景点之一，每年接待游客约600万人。

埃菲尔铁塔曾被粉刷成红棕色、赭褐色、黄色、棕黄色和深红色，直到1968年被主管方确定为目前的颜色。

埃菲尔铁塔管理公司总经理让•贝尔纳布罗斯在接受记者采访时说：“这是最适合埃菲尔铁塔的颜色，是它最优雅的衣装。这是在过去40年间所有热爱埃菲尔铁塔的人告诉我们的，因此我们决定将一直使用这种棕色。”

埃菲尔铁塔由工程师古斯塔夫•埃菲尔设计，当时是为1889年的巴黎世界博览会修建。最初很多巴黎人并不喜欢它。

Vocabulary:

eyesore:眼中钉