Olympic officials announced that the medals being awarded at this Summer’s games in Paris, France, will all feature iron from the Eiffel Tower.
Paris 2024’s creative director, Thierry Reboul, told BBC News reporters, “It’s the opportunity for the athletes to bring back a piece of Paris with them. The absolute symbol of Paris and France is the Eiffel Tower.”
The Eiffel Tower officially opened in 1889 after about two years of construction. Since its opening 135 years ago, the monument has undergone several renovations, “with some of the original iron cut off and preserved over time,” writes Artnet’s Adam Schrader. Some of those fragments have now found a new home in the 2024 Olympic medals.
Each Olympic medal features a piece of the Eiffel Tower’s iron, though not in its original form. The pieces have had their “Eiffel Tower brown” paint removed and then were reshaped. They were changed into hexagons, which the Games’ official website cites as “the geometrical shape of France.” They were then engraved with the words “Paris 2024”, along with the Olympic rings. Finally, the Games logo was added, which “looks like a flame or the face of a woman with a chic bob haircut,” according to John Leicester of the Associated Press (AP).
Joachim Roncin, the head of design for the Paris Games organizing committee, says the idea to use pieces of the Eiffel Tower came from a series of brainstorming sessions.
“We realized that there’s one symbol known across the world, which is the Eiffel Tower,” Roncin told the AP. “We said to ourselves, ‘Hey, what if we approached the Eiffel Tower Operating Company to see if it’s possible to get a bit of the Eiffel Tower to integrate into the medals?” The Eiffel Tower Operating Company runs the tourist-attracting landmark, and the committee wasn’t sure they would offer up such precious materials.
Roncin said their “dream became a reality” when the Operating Company agreed to donate pieces of the tower’s original iron.
The medals were designed by the French jewelry house Chaumet and contain several features that pay tribute to the Eiffel Tower. The iron is secured by small clasps that mimic the rivets holding the monument together. The medals’ ribbons are decorated with patterns similar to the tower’s latticework structure.
The iron pieces are surrounded by recycled gold, silver, and bronze. The Paris Mint is producing over 5,000 of the medals, with 2,600 for the Olympics and 2,400 for the Paralympics. The medals are essentially the same but have one key difference. The Olympic medals show Nike, the goddess of victory, holding the Olympic torch. The Paralympic medals have an image of the Eiffel Tower.
Roncin and the rest of his team are elated to include pieces of France’s iconic monument in the medals. “Having a gold medal is already something incredible,” Roncin says. “But we wanted to add this French touch, and we thought that the Eiffel Tower would be this cherry on the top.”
