Overview
Gustave Eiffel’s company assembled 18,000 iron pieces with two and a half million rivets in two years, to a design by his engineers Koechlin and Nouguier. Artists petitioned against it as a useless monstrosity; the wireless aerial fixed to it in 1909 is what saved it from demolition. It is repainted every seven years by hand, in a shade slightly darker at the base than at the top so it reads as one colour from the ground.
Highlights
Book online weeks ahead for a timed lift ticket, or take the stairs to the second floor — shorter queue, cheaper, and the ironwork is the thing you came for. The Trocadéro terrace across the river is the classic view; the Champ de Mars is the closer one. On the hour after dark the tower sparkles for five minutes.