---
node: spot_paris_eiffel_tower
type: spot
slug: eiffel_tower
destination: dest_paris
title: "Eiffel Tower"
lead: "The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World's Fair as a temporary arch over the entrance, and stayed because it proved useful as a radio mast. At 330 metres it was the tallest structure on earth for forty years."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_paris_eiffel_tower.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tour_Eiffel_Wikimedia_Commons.jpg"
image_author: "Benh LIEU SONG"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## 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.