Two American men were found asleep inside the Eiffel Tower early Monday morning after drunkenly getting trapped overnight.
The men were discovered by security guards while they were making their rounds before the building opened, the New York Post reported.
Police said the tourists gained access to the building during its off hours by first paying an entry ticket to scale the building at 10:40 p.m. local time on Sunday, per CBS News.
They then jumped over the security barriers on their climb down the stairs from the top platform of the Parisian landmark, which is 276 meters, or 905.5 feet high.
Prosecutors in Paris told local news agency AFP that the tourists “appear to have got stuck because of how drunk they were,” according to BBC News.
Four-Generation American Family Spends the Night in the Eiffel Tower – on the Fourth of July!
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They were located somewhere between the second and third floors in an area that is usually closed off from the public, according to both BBC News and CBS News.
Because the tourists were found “in the early hours” of Monday, per The Independent, the Eiffel Tower had to push back its regular opening local time of 9 a.m.
The men were eventually retrieved by a firefighter unit that specializes in rescuing people from great heights, AFP said, according to BBC News. Afterwards, they were interrogated by police in the seventh district of Paris, CBS News reported.
Sete, the publicly-owned company that operates the Eiffel Tower, said the interlopers “did not pose any apparent threat,” per CBS News. However, Sete plans to file a criminal complaint against the men.
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Almost 7 million people visit the Parisian landmark every year, with 75 percent being tourists, according to the Eiffel Tower’s official website.
BBC News and The Independent reported that the incident comes just days after the Eiffel Tower received a bomb threat, forcing the building to be evacuated twice on Saturday. The building reopened later Saturday after police determined that the bomb threats were not real.
French authorities are investigating the bomb threats, which were posted on a gaming website, as well as an online platform between Parisian citizens and the police, per BBC News.
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