On a hot day the Eiffel Tower is measurably taller than on a cold one — the iron expands in the sun and the summit can rise by around 15 centimetres, tilting gently away from the heat. That the whole thing was built as a temporary showpiece, meant to stand for just twenty years, makes its survival all the more remarkable. This is Guide № 003 in The Love Paris Guide series.
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The Eiffel Tower — in a beautifully designed, printable booklet. The Love Paris Guide № 003.
Why It Was Built at All
The tower was raised as the entrance arch to the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the World’s Fair held to mark the centenary of the French Revolution. France wanted a statement piece that showed off its engineering muscle, and a 300-metre iron tower — by far the tallest structure in the world at the time — did exactly that. It held that record for roughly four decades, until New York’s Chrysler Building overtook it in 1930.
The permit was only ever for twenty years, after which the tower was to be dismantled. What saved it was not sentiment but usefulness: it made an excellent mounting point for radiotelegraph antennas, and by the early 1900s the military value of that height had become obvious. Broadcasting kept it standing long enough for Paris to fall in love with it.
Who Actually Designed It
Gustave Eiffel’s name is on the tower, but the first sketches came from two engineers in his company, Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier. The architect Stephen Sauvestre then softened the design with the decorative arches at the base and the glass pavilions. Eiffel bought the rights to the idea, backed it, refined it and built it through his firm — so while he earned his place on it, he did not draw it alone.
Around the first-level gallery Eiffel had the names of 72 French scientists, engineers and mathematicians engraved into the ironwork, a detail many visitors walk straight past. He also kept a small private apartment near the summit, which survives today and is set up with mannequins of Eiffel and his guest Thomas Edison.
How It Holds Together
The tower is built from puddled iron — a form of wrought iron, not steel — assembled from more than 18,000 individual metal parts held by roughly 2.5 million rivets. It weighs about 10,000 tonnes in total, yet the design is so open that the pressure it exerts on the ground is often compared to that of a person sitting in a chair.
Iron rusts, so the tower has been repainted roughly every seven years since it was built, each campaign using around 60 tonnes of paint applied by hand. The colour is a custom shade officially called “Eiffel Tower Brown,” and it is actually applied in three graduated tones — darker at the base, lighter toward the top — so the structure reads as a single even colour against the sky.
Visiting Today
There are three visitor levels. The first and second floors can be reached on foot or by lift; the summit is lift-only. Counting all the way to the top comes to 1,665 steps, though public stair access stops at the second floor, about 674 steps up. Booking a timed ticket online well ahead almost always beats queuing at the base, and lift tickets to the summit sell out first.
After dark the tower wears its golden lighting, and for the first five minutes of every hour it sparkles with thousands of flashing bulbs — a display first switched on for the millennium celebrations in 2000 and kept ever since. We think the sparkle is best watched from a short distance away, across the Seine on the Trocadéro side, rather than from directly underneath.
Myths Worth Retiring
Myth: The Eiffel Tower is made of steel. It is made of puddled iron, a wrought-iron material chosen for its strength and workability in the 1880s. Steel was available but not the metal Eiffel’s team relied on here.
Myth: Everyone loved it from the start. In 1887 a group of prominent artists and writers published a furious protest against the tower, calling it a useless and monstrous eyesore. The novelist Guy de Maupassant was among the signatories, and the story goes that he later lunched in the tower’s restaurant precisely because it was the one spot in Paris from which he could not see it.
Myth: It was always meant to be permanent. The original agreement gave it a twenty-year lifespan before demolition. Its value as a radio and telegraph antenna is what earned it a reprieve.
Frequently Asked Questions
How tall is the Eiffel Tower?
It stands about 330 metres today, including the antennas at the summit. The iron structure itself is close to the original 300 metres; broadcasting equipment added over the years accounts for the rest, and that figure shifts slightly whenever new antennas go up.
Can you really go up in the winter, or does it close?
The tower is open year-round, including winter. Very high winds can temporarily close the summit for safety, since the top sways a little in strong gusts, but the lower levels usually stay open. Cold, clear winter days often give the sharpest views.
Is it true someone “sold” the Eiffel Tower?
Yes — the con man Victor Lustig famously posed as a government official in 1925 and persuaded scrap-metal dealers that the tower was to be dismantled and sold off. He pulled the scheme twice before fleeing Paris. The tower, of course, was never his to sell.
More The Love Paris Guides
The Love Paris Guide is a numbered series — one tightly focused subject at a time, each with its own downloadable collectible edition. Guide № 001 is The Baguette, Guide № 002 is Bastille Day in Paris, This is Guide № 003. More editions are on the way.
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