The Eiffel Tower closes due to labor action on the occasion of its creator’s birthday

History buffs visiting Paris may have made a plan to check out the Eiffeltower on Wednesday. After all, it was the centenary of the death of Gustave Eiffel, the eponymous civil engineer whose company designed and built it.

But the sign they discovered at the monument contained grim tidings: “La Tour Eiffel is current event.” The tower was closed.

The reason will be known to anyone who has spent much time in France: a labor action.

Tourists could stroll around the Esplanade, the single-level area around the base of the tower. But they couldn’t spend the €28.3 it costs to take the elevator to the top, nor afford the reduced rate of €21.5 for those hardy souls willing to climb about half the stairs.

At 1,200 feet tall, or about three-quarters the height of the Empire State Building including the spire, the tower attracts six million to seven million tourists a year.

It is easily visible from almost anywhere in Paris and would have been the inspiration for a joke by De Maupassant, Flaubert or Balzac or William Morris. Whichever of these writers dined regularly in the Tower, and when asked why, perhaps apocryphally replied, “It’s the only place in Paris where I can’t see the thing.”

The Confédération générale du travail, the union representing workers in the tower, did not respond to a request for comment, but quoted by the BBC They said the tower’s operators were “heading for disaster” and called the economic plans “overambitious and unsustainable” because they had underestimated the costs of its maintenance and renovation.

A show of son et lumière – sound and light – to celebrate the anniversary will go ahead as planned.

The tower was completed in 1889 by Eiffel and his engineers and construction workers to commemorate another 100 years ago – the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution – and has barely stayed out of the news since.

It recently made international headlines when it emerged that two American tourists had spent the night there.

The Eiffel Tower was also closed in March, along with many other sites including the Louvre, following sweeping workers’ protests over a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The tower was expected to reopen on Thursday so tourists can once again enjoy the view that has delighted visitors for more than a century.

But they will have to hurry. The price will increase to €29.40 on January 1.