The Eiffel Tower: How a "Temporary" Tower Became the Face of Paris

If you ask most travelers to picture Paris, they picture this: a lattice of iron rising over the Seine, glowing gold at night. It's easy to forget the Eiffel Tower was never supposed to be permanent — and that plenty of Parisians hated it on sight.

Built for a birthday party

The tower was designed as the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair marking the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. France wanted an entrance arch that would prove to the world it could out-engineer anyone, and a design competition drew more than 100 proposals. The winning concept came from engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, refined with decorative arches by architect Stephen Sauvestre, and built by the construction company of Gustave Eiffel — whose name it still carries.

Construction started on January 28, 1887, and finished March 31, 1889, just in time for the fair. Building a 330-meter iron structure in a little over two years, largely by hand, remains one of the more remarkable feats of 19th-century engineering.

"A useless and monstrous" tower

Not everyone was impressed. A group of prominent French writers and artists — including Guy de Maupassant — signed a public petition calling the tower a "useless and monstrous" eyesore that would disgrace the Paris skyline. Maupassant reportedly ate lunch in the tower's restaurant regularly, allegedly because it was the one place in Paris where he didn't have to look at it.

The public disagreed with the critics almost immediately. Nearly 30,000 visitors climbed the tower's 1,710 steps in the days before the elevators were finished, and it quickly became the fair's biggest draw.

Nearly demolished — twice

Here's the part most visitors don't know: the Eiffel Tower's original building permit was only for 20 years. Paris planned to tear it down in 1909. It survived because Gustave Eiffel had turned it into a scientific instrument — installing a meteorology lab and, crucially, one of the first radio antennas in France. By the time the permit expired, the tower was transmitting military radio signals, and during World War I its wireless station intercepted German communications that contributed to the French victory at the Battle of the Marne in 1914. A structure that useful was much harder to demolish.

Quick facts

• Height: 330 meters (1,083 ft), including modern antennas
• Weight: about 7,300 tonnes of wrought iron (roughly 10,100 tonnes with elevators and additions)
• World's tallest structure: held the title for 41 years, until New York's Chrysler Building overtook it in 1930
• Annual visitors: around 6.9 million, making it the most-visited paid monument in the world

Visiting today

More than 130 years after that "temporary" World's Fair exhibit went up, the tower is still standing, still repainted every seven years, and still the first thing most people want to see when they land in Paris. If you're planning a trip, mornings and late evenings tend to have shorter lines than midday, and the view from the second floor is, for most visitors, worth more than the extra time and cost of going all the way to the top.