The Eiffel Tower, France most iconic building. I couldn’t possible go to Paris and not at least mention the Eiffel Tower! There is a global fascination with this tower and all that is romantic or French is associated with it!
Nickname La dame de fer, the iron lady, this 1889 tower located at Champ de Mars is the tallest building in Paris and the most visited paid monument in the the world! The tower stands 324 meters tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building.
“The tower has three levels for visitors. Tickets can be purchased to ascend, by stairs or lift, to the first and second levels. The walk to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to the second level. The third and highest level is accessible only by elevator. Both the first and second levels feature restaurants. ” – wiki
The Eiffel Tower appears in many Hollywood movies and it’s almost a given that any scene that is set in Paris, you’ll be able to see the Eiffel Tower from the window but that is of course just Hollywood fiction. But it did create a legacy and there are many fans of the Eiffel Tower whose hearts would just melt at the sight of it. In fact, one American women, Erika Eiffel, fell so deeply in love with the Eiffel Tower that she actually married it in 2007! Crazy right?
If you want to see the best of the tower, I suggest you do an early booking with the Jules Verne restaurant a couple of days before heading to the Eiffel tower. Here’s the number to call : +(33)145556144.
And if you like looking out of unusual details, the names of 72 prominent French scientists and famous personalities are affixed on the sides of Eiffel Tower just beneath the first platform, 18 names per side.
The Eiffel Tower is a lot larger in real life than it is in pictures and it’s quite majestic. It’s cute to note that while Hitler came to see the Eiffel Tower during WW2, he never got a chance to go up because the French cut the lines of the elevators and only repaired it after the Germans left France. Of course Hitler was too lazy to climb the stairs up. It’ll be a really cool challenge to climb the stairs all the way up instead of using the elevators though!
Do you know that of all the man-made structures standing today, for a period of 4300 years, the Pyramid of Egypt was the TALLEST, until the French built the Eiffel Tower in 1889?
Cornelius,
The Eiffel Tower was built 4300 years after the Pyramid of Egypt but it wasn’t the first tallest man made structure to over take the Pyramid, there were a few others and one of the most recognizable one is the Washington Monument which was the tallest structure until the Eiffel Tower was built a decade later.
Lovely pics of Eiffel Tower & all ur other Paris pics. Interesting info on Hitler & the Eiffel Tower (never heard that before). Additional info- the tower was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair (Eposition Universelle). The tower was very controversial in its early days…many called it an eyesore.
Fredric Delmais,
Interesting tidbits of information! Actually in some ways I can understand how some people could view the Eiffel Tower an eyesore. But the science and the engineering behind it is still a marvel!
Fredric: Now the Eiffel is an “I saw” as in I went to Paris and I SAW the Eiffel Tower… :p
Karen,
You are right about the Washington Monument. It was completed in December 6, 1884. Beat Eiffel by 5 years.
There were others that were taller before the Washington Monument but there are not “standing today,” as what I wrote in my 1st post.
This post has become a nano Guinness Book of Records… :p