Paris 2024 Organizers Unveil Olympic Medals Featuring Iron From Eiffel Tower

The medals for the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games were unveiled Thursday. Designed by a jeweler, Chaumet, for the first time, all 5,084 medals will be encrusted with original iron from the Eiffel Tower.

“By placing fragments of the Eiffel Tower at the center of its medals, Paris 2024 hopes to leave athletes with an unforgettable memory of the Games, of Paris and of France,” officials from Paris 2024 said in a statement.

Every piece of the Eiffel Tower included will be hexagonal and weigh 18 grams. The designers reportedly sought to give these discarded pieces of the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, a “second lease of life” in the form of medals. Each piece of iron will feature the Paris 2024 logo.

“We came to Chaumet with a crazy idea,” Joachim Roncin, Director of Design at Paris 2024, said, according to Forbes. “Why not include a little of the Eiffel Tower in the medals? The Chaumet team rose to the challenge and we are all very proud of the result.”

Chaumet is owned and operated under the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy luxury brand and typically designs watches and jewelry. The company is based in the Place Vendome in Paris.

Event organizers unveiled the medals nearly six months ahead of the Olympic Games, which will begin on July 26. The Paralympics begin on August 28. The Eiffel Tower is expected to be a prominent motif in this year’s Olympic Games. Several events, including beach volleyball in the Olympics and blind soccer in the Paralympics, will be held beside the 135-year-old structure.

Paris last hosted the Olympic Games in 1924, exactly 100 years ago. The city also hosted in 1900, which means that it will soon join London as one of just two cities to host the Olympics three times. The European pair will eventually be joined by Los Angeles in 2028. As a host nation on six different occasions, France only trails the United States, which has hosted nine games since 1904.

Article by Patrick Moquin