The Eiffel Tower is a landmark in Paris.
It is located on the Champs de Mars at 5 Avenue Anatole France in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Paris Exposition.
It was constructed to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution.
Construction began on January 28, 1887 and was concluded on March 31, 1889; 50 engineers and designers, between 150 and 300 workers, 18,038 pieces of wrought iron and 2.5 million rivets were needed to build the Eiffel Tower.
The tower is 324 meters (1,063 feet) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building, and the tallest structure in Paris. Its base is square, measuring 125 meters (410 ft) on each side.
The tower has three levels for visitors, with restaurants on the first and second levels.
The top level’s upper platform is 276 m (906 ft) above the ground – the highest observation deck accessible to the public in the European Union.
The Eiffel Tower was the tallest man made structure in the world for 41 years before being surpassed by the Chrysler Building in New York.
The Eiffel Tower was named after Gustave Eiffel whose company built it. It was co-designed by Maurice Koechlin, Emile Nouguier, with the assistance of Stephen Sauvestre, all of whom worked for Eiffel.
It was initially criticised by some of France’s leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but the Eiffel Tower has become a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognisable structures in the world.
The Eiffel Tower was only meant to stand for 20 years, but the French military and government began using it for radio communication and later telecommunication. When the permit expired in 1909, the City of Paris decided to keep it.
The wrought iron of the Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tons, and the addition of lifts, shops and antennae have brought the total weight to approximately 10,100 tons.
When it opened in 1889, the Eiffel Tower sported a reddish-brown color. A decade later, it was coated in yellow paint. The tower was also yellow-brown and chestnut brown before the adoption of the current, specially mixed “Eiffel Tower Brown” in 1968. Every seven years, painters apply 60 tons of paint to the tower to keep her looking young.
The Eiffel Tower uses 20,000 light bulbs to make it sparkle every night, for 10 minutes on the hour. The monument consumes 7.8 million kWh of electricity per year, the equivalent of a small village.
In total, there are 1,665 steps from the esplanade up to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
The height of the building varies by 15 centimeters (6 inches) due to temperature, and the structure sways a mere 7 centimeters (2–3 inches) in the wind.
The Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world with about 7 million people annually.
Believe it or not, the Eiffel Tower was originally supposed to be in Barcelona. But thinking the thing would end up looking like an eyesore, the city rejected Gustave Eiffel’s plans, and he was forced to repitch the project elsewhere. Luckily, Eiffel found a home for his idea in Paris, where the Tower could serve as the main archway for the 1889 International Exposition.
Gustave Eiffel was “the object of general envy” among Parisians during his lifetime, and it wasn’t for designing one of the most famous monuments of all time. Rather, it was due to the fact that he had a private apartment at the top of the tower—and almost no one else was allowed access to it. Located on the third level of the tower, Eiffel’s private apartment was not large, but it was cozy. In contrast to the steely industrial girders of the rest of the tower, the apartment was reported to be, “furnished in the simple style dear to scientists.”
One of the greatest scams in history was when “Count” Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower to a scrap-metal dealer in the early 20th century.
Over the years, the Eiffel Tower has been the site of numerous high-profile stunts, ceremonial events and even scientific experiments. In 1911, for instance, the German physicist Theodor Wulf used an electrometer to detect higher levels of radiation at its top than at its base, observing the effects of what are now called cosmic rays.
Of the 40 or so replicas of the Eiffel Tower, only two are full size: the Tokyo Tower in Japan and the Long Ta communications tower in China.