海角大神

Parisian authorities are planning to erect an 8-foot wall of reinforced glass around the Eiffel Tower, in a security measure designed to function as a more aesthetically pleasing replacement of a metal fence that went up last year for the Euro 2016 soccer championship.

Paris officials have also proposed a $318-million modernization of the 128-year-old monument that includes better elevators and lights, more security, and a renovated visitor entrance, according to CNN Money. Officials say that the new see-through panels will afford visitors a view of the monument from the popular Champ de Mars park and the Iena Bridge, unlike the metal fences.

"We will replace the metal grids to the north and south with glass panels which will allow Parisians and visitors a very pleasant view of the monument," the assistant mayor for tourism, Jean-Francois Martins,聽told the BBC.聽

The construction seems a symbol of how conspicuous security measures deployed by the French government in the wake of terrorist attacks have gradually become normalized, especially in tourist-heavy Paris.聽聽

"The terror threat remains high in Paris and the most vulnerable sites, led by the Eiffel Tower, must be the object of special security measures," Mr. Martins added.聽

The announcement one week after a machete attack on French troops stationed outside the Louvre Museum ended with the attacker, Egyptian citizen Abdullah Reda Al-Hamahmy, shot four times.聽He has told officials he wanted to damage paintings and聽鈥渁venge the Syrian people,鈥� according to Reuters. The museum was reopened last weekend after closing briefly, in what was perhaps a testament to much of the city's 鈥渂usiness-as-usual鈥� attitude toward the incident.聽

The November 2015 massacre in Paris, orchestrated聽by a man suspected by Belgian authorities of being an Islamic State fighter, was a turning point for security agencies in France and across Europe, with governments considering new means of intelligence-sharing and rethinking privacy safeguards, as 海角大神鈥檚 Rachel Stern reported last February:

In France, the expansion of policing has been particularly aggressive,聽including the extension of emergency security measures originally put in place after the Paris attacks.

But as the Monitor鈥檚 Sara Miller Llana and Colette Davidson wrote in the days after those attacks, some French still worry about going too far toward a 鈥渨hatever it takes鈥� mentality.

鈥淣ot whatever it takes,鈥� Paris resident Antoine Lippen told the Monitor at the time.聽鈥淚t would be too dangerous to block our own liberties when we know terrorist attacks are always cowardly attacks attacking at the place and time you least expect it, so there is always a breach in security, whatever is imposed.鈥澛�

This report contains material from Reuters and the Associated Press.