Image: Nikada/Istock.com via AFP Relaxnews

According to a report published on Monday, Jan. 29 by the Société d’exploitation de la tour Eiffel (Sete), after a three-year decline beginning in 2014, the number of visitors to the Parisian landmark increased by 5.6 percent in 2017.

Some 6,207,303 visitors enjoyed the view from the Eiffel Tower in 2017. After an initial falloff in 2015, when it attracted 6.91 million visitors (down by 2.5 percent from the previous year), the number of people paying to explore the monument slumped to 5.9 million (a decline of 14.2 percent) in 2016, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the French capital.

Now 2017 has brought positive news for the monument also known as the Iron Lady, with numbers up by 5.6 percent. The year of 2017 will also be remembered for the September celebrations, which attracted large numbers of Parisians and tourists, to mark 300 million visits to the tower since its inauguration in 1889.

In recent months, lights on the Eiffel Tower have been extinguished on three occasions in homage to the victims of attacks in Kabul (on Dec. 28), the village of Bir al-Abed in Egypt (on Nov. 24), and in Marseille and Las Vegas (on Oct. 2). JB

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