The Eiffel Tower is undoubtedly Paris' most famous monument and the ultimate symbol of the City of Lights. But what do you really know about this metal tower, which sparkles with precious lights every evening and attracts around 7 million tourists a year?
Today, let me take you to the elevator, which will not take you straight to the third floor of the tower, but rather back in time, straight to the 80s, so that we can discover together the fascinating hysteria of the “inverted candlestick” and other various and strange nicknames that Parisians have given to this monumental metal structure.
I promise you that after reading this article, you will never look at the tower the same way, so whether you are “just” a history buff or you are a Visit the Eiffel Tower Soon, I promise you that you will not regret taking about ten minutes to read the fascinating story of the tower that changed the Paris skyline.
Let's get into the time elevator and get going!
Secrets of Le Marais: A Journey into the Historic and Chic Heart of Paris
Join us on a virtual journey to the most fascinating district in Paris. Together we will discover hidden courtyards, French nobility, and the true stories behind the magnificent facades.
Gustave Eiffel's Tower Wins a Competition with a Giant Sprinkler and a Huge Guillotine
France The 80s were a turbulent and unstable time. It was only the second decade of the young Third Republic, which had been established in 19 after the fall of the Third Empire, and there were many dangers lurking.
On the right, some royalists still dreamed of the return of the monarchy, while the Bonapartists did not give up the idea of a Third Empire. On the left, The anarchists, who, through a series of terrorist attacks, attempted to overthrow the Republic. It is not surprising that the leaders of the Republic sought in every way to unite the French people with republican ideas.
The first opportunity that came their way was the death of Victor Hugo In 1885. Since after the publication of Les Misérables, Victor Hugo was considered one of the republican symbols, his funeral, which ended inPantheon, became a demonstration of support for these values.
All this was not enough, and the foundations of the Republic were still shaky, to the point that a characterless general named Boulanger (Georges Ernest Boulanger 1837-1891) almost succeeded in seizing power in 1888-1889. The leadership, which had survived by the skin of its teeth, realized that it needed some great event that would excite the masses and increase the prestige of the Republic.
Fortunately for her, the 100th anniversary celebrations in honor of theFrench Revolution They were getting closer and closer, and with them a wonderful opportunity to show how magnificent, strong, and modern the Republic was. To mark the historic event, it was decided to hold a huge fair in Paris, which was a continuation of the fairs of 1878, 1867, and 1856.
The purpose of these fairs was to showcase the best scientific advances of the time and to show that France was at the forefront of technology of the day. For example, the 1867 fair brought to Paris theBatu Mosh While the one to be held in 1900 will bring humanity the escalator and Paris theMetro.
During the 80s, the fair's committee issued a call to bring a technological display the likes of which had never been seen before, which would become the fair's central attraction.
Not surprisingly, the committee received many suggestions, and these are the three ideas that made it to the finals:
- A giant sprinkler that will allow you to water everything The Gardens of Paris (How were they going to do this without getting the entire town wet? We'll probably never know.)
- A huge guillotine that will stand at the edge of the Champs de Mars and be displayed in memory of the victims French Revolution.
- An enormous iron tower (318 meters), which was presented by a bridge engineer named Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) and which was to be the tallest structure of its time.
After quite a bit of debate, the committee members decided to choose the Eiffel Tower, and we were left to ask ourselves what would have happened if one of the other options had been chosen (I wonder if the symbol of Paris would have been a sprinkler or if you and your children would have come to climb the guillotine, which is placed on the banks of the Seine).
Climb the tower without an elevator
Before we continue our story, a full disclosure, an important historical fact: it is true that it was Gustave Eiffel's office that won the competition and as a result the tower was named after him and all the credit went to him. However, in reality it was the engineers Maurice Koechlin (1856-1946) and Émile Nouguier (1840-1897) who conceived and designed the tower, as can be seen in the first sketch of the Eiffel Tower, which Maurice Koechlin drew in June 1884.
Having given due credit to the two relatively unknown engineers, we can continue our story and skip to 1887, when the foundations of the tower were laid and construction work began. I won't bore you with all the technical details of the construction of this gigantic construction, but it is safe to say that from the very beginning it aroused quite a bit of concern and even revulsion. As a result, the construction process was accompanied by sensational headlines claiming that the structure was very dangerous and could, due to a little wind, fall directly on Montmartre Hill!
Gustave Eiffel and his team were in a race against time to ensure that the tower was ready by the opening day of the exhibition. They managed not only to meet the difficult schedule but also to greatly reduce the number of workers injured during construction, a feat not easy even today (as evidenced by the large number of workers who fall to their deaths each year in our country). If you would like to see how the tower was built, step by step, you are welcome to watch this short video:
And so, on March 31, about two years after construction began on the tower, the first climb took place. Imagine about sixty men, some middle-aged, dressed in suits and top hats, slowly climbing the steps of the tower (the elevators from the American company Otis had not yet been installed).
Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, 62, broke down on the second floor, while most of the others broke down shortly after. However, Eiffel did not give up, and managed to gather ten people who were willing to go all the way and climb to the top of the tower on foot.
And so, panting and on the verge of a heart attack, the brave group reached the top of the tower and a breathtaking view opened up before them. Against this backdrop, Gustave Eiffel received the Legion of Honor By Minister of Commerce and Industry Édouard Lockroy. There is no doubt that this was the pinnacle of his life (literally).
Fear and Loathing in Paris
The Eiffel Tower became the big hit of the 1889 Exposition, and it’s no surprise. It was the tallest structure in the world and the lightest in terms of its height (it weighed “only” about 7,000 tons). The tower held the title of the world’s tallest building for 41 years, until the Chrysler Tower in New York took the top spot. However, while the Chrysler Tower never became a New York symbol, the Eiffel Tower remained a Parisian symbol long after it lost the height competition.
Although the Eiffel Tower became a symbol, most Parisians did not welcome it with applause. Far from it, a large part of the Parisian elite simply detested this tower.
The famous writer Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) went so far as to decide to start eating at a restaurant on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower simply because it was the only place in Paris from which the tower could not be seen.
A long line of writers and intellectuals joined the protest against the tower, including composer Charles Gounod, writer Alexandre Dumas, Jr., and architect Charles Garnier, known to us for The opera he built in ParisIn a petition signed by those intellectuals, the tower was called a “hollow candlestick,” a “skeleton,” and even a “giant enema,” and the government was required to remove it as quickly as possible.
By the way, despite a thousand and one differences, Adolf Hitler didn’t like the Eiffel Tower either. It is said that on his famous trip to Paris after the occupation, he arrived at the Palais de Chaillot square, looked at the tower and exclaimed: “Is that all?! It’s ugly!” and left (not before taking a picture with it in the background as the last of the tourists).
Public pressure and the fact that Eiffel was granted a concession for only 20 years meant that the very existence of the tower was in danger. However, what saved the Eiffel Tower from demolition was the invention of wireless: the height of the tower made it ideal not only for weather research (Eiffel himself built a small laboratory there to study the subject) but also for radio broadcasting.
During World War I, the French army discovered that an antenna placed on top of the tower could be used as an electronic warfare tool, which made the tower very useful. Initially, the Signal Corps used the tower to jam German radio communications, and later the Eiffel became a listening device, thanks to which the spy was caught. Mata Hari In 1917.
All of this saved the tower's life, and once it seemed like it was here to stay, more and more Parisians began to love it.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower (Twice)
The fact that the Eiffel Tower had become a Parisian symbol did not go unnoticed by Victor Lustig (1890-1947), a conman of Jewish origin, who arrived in Paris in 1925.
city of Lights At that time, it had already begun to recover from World War I and had become a city where the whole of Europe was hosted. In short, a city where there were quite a few people with too much money, who were just looking for someone to help them deal with the burden on their wallets.
One day that year, Lustig read an article in the newspaper about how the maintenance of the Eiffel Tower was costingParis Municipality A huge fortune, and there are voices demanding its liquidation, in order to save taxpayers' money. This innocent news set the gears in Lustig's mind to work, and within a short time, a plan emerged that was ingenious in its simplicity.
Lustig managed to arrange for himself a fake certificate from a representative of the French government and gathered six of the richest metal merchants in Paris atCrillon Hotel the magnificent
At the meeting, he introduced himself as a senior French government official and told them that the city had decided to dismantle the Eiffel Tower and sell it because it could no longer maintain it. However, since they did not want a public scandal if the plan became public too soon, they were not allowed to tell anyone about it until the contract was signed.
Lustig then took the metal merchants on a tour of the Eiffel Tower, during which he checked to see who the biggest sucker among them was. It was André Poisson – a fairly successful metal merchant, with one weakness. As a nouveau riche, he felt that despite his financial success he was not really accepted into the economic elite of Paris. A grandiose act such as purchasing the Eiffel Tower could have been a very successful ticket to entry.
Suddenly, Lustig encountered an unexpected problem. Poisson's wife became suspicious and asked why the deal was so secret on the one hand, and on the other, it was being processed so quickly. In order to allay her suspicions, Lustig "confessed" that as a city official his salary was too low and in order to "make ends meet", he had to look for creative ways to increase his salary. Therefore, in order for his managers not to find out, it was necessary to maintain secrecy.
Poisson understood immediately. In his eyes, Lustig was nothing more than a rotten official who wanted a bribe. Paradoxically, this completely removed suspicions from him. And so our hero managed to get not only a handsome sum of money for the Eiffel Tower, but also an additional sum as a “bribe.”
As soon as the suitcase of money changed hands, Victor Lustig boarded the train to Vienna and went underground. Surprisingly, nothing happened because Poisson, upon discovering that he had been the victim of a scam, refused to go to the police, so as not to be portrayed as a fool. This encouraged Lustig to return to the City of Lights to look for new suckers.
And so Victor Lustig repeated the exact same scheme. He located 6 new metal dealers, drove them to the tower, and found him the person with the highest potential to “buy” the tower.
However, this time the plot went awry and the merchant went to the police with the sales contract and the fake certificate. Luckily for Lustig, he managed to escape the police at the last minute and board the train that took him out of France, to which he has not returned since.
Later in life, he moved to the United States, where he engaged in various con artists and even managed to deceive Al Capone himself. Eventually, Lustig's luck ran out and he was arrested on charges of counterfeiting money and sent to Alcatraz prison, where he died in 1947 of pneumonia. The Eiffel Tower, on the other hand, is still alive and well.
The people who climb to the top of the tower on foot and those who jump down
While many Parisian intellectuals didn't really like the tower, the sporting community embraced it enthusiastically. In 1891, about two years after the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated, a young man named Sylvain Dornon climbed the tower's stairs to the first floor using crutches.
In 1905, a climbing competition was held in which 227 athletes participated, climbing the tower on foot. The winner reached the second floor in 3 minutes and 12 seconds! Why didn't they think of making this an Olympic event?!
Others decided that it would be more interesting to make the way down, and as quickly as possible. As early as 1912, an Austrian guy named Reichelt tried to jump from the tower with a parachute. Unfortunately, he landed on his head a few seconds after jumping. That same year, an American pilot flew between the legs of the tower, which caused him to lose his pilot's license (at least he came back alive to tell about it).
Over the years, quite a few strange people have attempted to jump from the tower in various ways. The most famous of these is Mr. A.J. Hacket, who in 1987 bungee jumped from the top of the tower straight into the arms of the police. There were also 380 people who decided to end their lives by jumping from the tower. Almost all of them succeeded, except for a woman who in 1964 jumped from the tower, fell onto the roof of a parked car and miraculously survived.
If you would like to read more about people who attempted suicide by jumping from the Eiffel Tower, you are invited to read the wonderful article by Dr. Orna Lieberman. The dark side of the Eiffel Tower.
Eiffel Tower in the cinema
The Eiffel Tower is not just a tourist attraction and a setting for all sorts of suicides and delusions. The film industry quickly discovered the potential of this tower and it has appeared countless times on the big screen.
The first film to feature the tower was René Clair's (1898-1981) Paris qui dort (The Sleeping Paris) from 1924. In this science fiction film, a couple of lovers manage to escape a projector that puts all the inhabitants of Paris to sleep, thanks to the fact that they are both on the Eiffel Tower when the projector is activated. Here is a short clip from the film, which takes place on the Eiffel Tower.
Since that film, the Eiffel Tower has starred in many films. I don't remember them all, but as a big James Bond fan, I can't help but mention the immortal scene starring Roger Moore and Grace Jones in the film "Murder in the Eyes," which begins at the Eiffel Tower and ends with a mad chase throughout Paris:
When the Eiffel Tower isn't starring in movies, it's starring in the lives of everyone who visits Paris. There's nothing more beautiful and magical than standing on one of Paris' bridges and watching the tower shimmer in the dark. Take a look at the following video that shows the Eiffel Tower in all its glory, accompanied by music by Erik Satie. I promise you won't be able to take your eyes off it:
And one last thing: in 2022 the Eiffel Tower will be six full meters taller!
In March 2022, the installation of a 6-meter antenna on top of the Eiffel Tower to enable digital audio transmission was completed. Therefore, as of that year, the Eiffel Tower is 330 meters tall!