Eiffel Tower

Landmark · Champ de Mars (7th)Paris,France

A wrought-iron lattice tower raised over Paris as a temporary fair entrance in 1889, licensed for twenty years and saved because it could carry radio.

The Eiffel Tower is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars, and standing beneath the four splayed feet dissolves the outline everyone knows. You look up into a cage of iron that seems to hold no solid surface at all, only air and lace. Lifts climb at an angle through the legs to three levels, the highest a narrow perch where the city flattens into grey roofs and green ribbons of park. It is hand-painted in a warm brown that shifts from base to tip. It was built to be taken down. Gustave Eiffel raised it as the entrance arch for the 1889 World's Fair on a permit of only twenty years, and much of artistic Paris signed a furious letter against it. What saved it was usefulness: engineers bolted antennas to its crown for radio and telegraphy, and a structure that could transmit was worth keeping. Assembled from some eighteen thousand iron pieces, it was the tallest thing on Earth for four decades. After dark, for a few minutes on the hour, thousands of bulbs flicker across it.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The second level beats the summit — the top is higher, but from the middle deck the streets and monuments still read as a living map rather than a distant sheet.
The bridges give you the tower without the queue — Pont de Bir-Hakeim and Pont d'Iéna frame it beautifully, and the metro crossing Bir-Hakeim delivers a famous fleeting view straight down the length of the structure.
The Champ de Mars is a picnic lawn, not just a foreground — late afternoon fills the long green with bread and wine, and the tower becomes the backdrop to an ordinary evening.
The tower by day is yours; the night light show is not — daytime images circulate freely, but the after-dark lighting counts legally as an artwork, so the sparkle carries a copyright.

Things to do

1
Look straight up from between the feet
Walk to the very centre of the plaza between the four pillars and tip your head straight back. Follow a single line of rivets up one leg until the lift cars vanish into the ironwork overhead. Stand still and let crossing girders and open sky fill your whole field of view. No flat photograph reproduces the angle.
2
Frame the whole tower from Trocadéro
Cross the Seine to the Trocadéro terrace and stand at the railing above the fountains. From here the tower lines up head to foot, held between the wings of the Palais de Chaillot. Come near sunset, when the iron warms to bronze and the sky behind it slowly changes colour.
3
Wait on the lawn for the hourly sparkle
Settle on the Champ de Mars grass before dark and watch for the top of any hour. For a few minutes the steady golden glow breaks into a fast white shimmer that runs across the whole frame. Keep an eye on the clock rather than the tower — it starts without warning and ends quickly.
4
Ride the lifts to the upper decks
Take the angled lift up through the legs to the decks. Feel the wind strengthen as you rise and the ground fall away beneath the open flooring. Move to the outer rail at each level and let the height settle before climbing higher, rather than racing straight for the top.