Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

Champ de Mars

Paris, 75007

www.tour-eiffel.fr
Open: Jan 1-Jun 13: 9:30a-11p daily (stairs: 9:30a-6p); June 14-Aug 31: 9a-midnight daily; Sep 1-Dec 31: 9:30a-11p daily (stairs 9:30a-6p)

The first and second floors can be reached using the stairs or lifts. To get the magnificent view at the top you need to take a lift.

At night, the Tower lights up and a strobe circles from the top. But, for the first ten minutes of every hour, the whole Eiffel Tower sparkles like a diamond!

The Eiffel Tower (La Tour Eiffel) was designed by architect Gustave Eiffel. It was built in 1889 as a 'temporary gateway' to L'Exposition Universelle - a fair to celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution.

Not everyone was happy when it was first built. Many considered it to be very ugly and wanted it pulled down. A petition of 300 names, including some famous people protesting its construction, was presented to the Paris city government. The petition read, "We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigor and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.

Nature lovers were against the tower thinking that it would interfere with the flight of birds over Paris. The newspapers named the Tower a " tragic street lamp", a "belfry skeleton", a "high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders", an "odious column of bolted metal", a "half built factory pipe", a "Tower of Babel"...

However, the Tower was built and was an instant success at the exhibition. Standing over 300 meters high beside the River Seine in Paris, it was the tallest building in the world, until 1930.

It had the permission to remain standing for no longer than twenty years and would have been dismantled, but was saved when the City of Paris discovered that the tower made an excellent radio antenna, and decided to keep it! It is still used for radio transmission and has an aerial at the very top.

Gustave Eiffel engraved on the tower seventy-two names of French scientists, engineers and other notable people. This engraving was painted over at the beginning of the 20th century but restored in 1986-1987 by the Société Nouvelle d'exploitation de la Tour Eiffel.

Brief history of the World's Fair

World's Fairs originated in the French tradition of national exhibitions, a tradition that culminated with the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 held in Paris. Since then, Paris hosted fairs in 1855, 1867, 1889, 1900 and 1937. Some of the Parisian landmarks left over from these exibitons include the Eifel Tower. Grand and Petit Palais, Pont Alexandre II, Palais du Tokyo, Trocadero Museum, Gare d’Orsay and the First Metro line completed in 1900.

World expositions presented the best in science and technology from around the world. Inventions such as the outdoor electric lighting, first motion picture and the telephone were first introduced at the World’s Fairs.