Paris - The Eiffel Tower - 7me

Plate LXV - The Eiffel Tower…

It was originally planned for the Barcelona Exposition of 1888. They did not like it! As Manuel in the British television series Fawlty Towers was ready to admit - in Barcelona they know nothing.

Easy to describe, it is an iron lattice observation and radio-broadcasting tower. 
A several thousand ton one. 
And at 324 metres to the tip of its topmost antenna, it is still the tallest structure in Paris. For a while it was also the tallest in the world, and whilst others may have overtaken it (starting with New York’s Chrysler Building in 1930), it remains the most instantly recognizable monument on the planet.

It is a marvel of engineering, designed to withstand specific height variable wind resistances. The 18,000 ‘puddled iron’ pieces of the structure weigh 7,500 tonnes, and are assembled with some two and a half million rivets. It is repainted (in three different colours) as an anti corrosive measure every seven years, with some 60 tonnes of paint. Specially designed and complex lifts were commissioned to cope with the curvature and slant of the construction, and it has welcomed well over 200 million paying visitors.

It is the Eiffel Tower.

It is France.

It is Paris.

And it is still there.

That is perhaps its greatest triumph, for Gustave Eiffel’s amazing tower, completed for the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, and to commemorate the centenary year of the French Revolution, was only intended to stand for twenty years. Surprisingly, the 1909 decision to save the Eiffel tower was not a landslide victory for the conservationists. Those opposed to its construction (and retention) included writers Alexander Dumas, and Guy de Maupassant, architect Charles Garnier, and composer Charles Gounod. Perhaps they should have gone with Manuel to Barcelona. 

Seen here in the background beneath the arch is the Palace of Chaillot, housing the Museum of Man (former home of the controversial displayed remains of Sarah Baartman - the Hottentot Venus, now returned to her home and a dignified resting place in South Africa), the Museum of the Navy and the Museum of French Monumments. The Palace was built for the Paris Exhibition of 1937 on the site of the Trocadéro.
And incidentally, due to copyright registration of the lighting design it is officially illegal to publish night time images of the tower without obtaining permission. So, here it is in all its magnificence - by day.