10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Eiffel Tower

There’s a new book out, “Eiffel’s Tower: And the World’s Fair Where Buffalo Bill Beguiled Paris, the Artists Quarreled, and Thomas Edison Became a Count.”
It’s in a relationship.

In 2008, a 36-year-old San Francisco woman, formerly a member of the U.S. Army and a champion archer, “married” the tower and changed her name to Erika La Tour Eiffel.
Way back when, Chrysler stole its thunder.But who’s laughing now?

The tower was the tallest building in the world until the Chrysler Building went up in New York in 1930.

But look at the bottom lines. The tower has been a reliable money-maker. Despite a scandal over 15 workers embezzling ticket revenue, the Paris city agency running the tower reported 2007 operating income of 59.8 million euros and operating profit of 1.5 million euros.

Chrysler? Bankrupt.

One of the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Even before it was done, some French big shots decided it was barbarous, stupefying and odious.In 1887, as construction began, composer Charles Gounod, writer Guy de Maupassant, painter William Bouguereau, architect Charles Garnier and scores of other sensitive French creative types signed a petition in protest, labeling the tower “useless and monstrous … a gigantic black factory chimney, its barbarous mass overwhelming and humiliating all our monuments and belittling our works of architecture, which will just disappear before this stupefying folly … this odious column of bolted metal.”

Picture dated March 31, 1889, shows the Eiffel Tower in Paris just after it was built.
It’s more expensive than the one in Las Vegas.

Through March 26, 2010, the cost of an elevator trip to the top of the real Eiffel Tower is 13 euros for an adult. (That’s about $17.25, by current foreign exchange rates.)

Cost of the Eiffel Tower Experience at Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas: $10 for an adult.
And no, you can’t climb to the top of the tower in Paris. (It’s 1,665 steps, or maybe 1,671, depending on who’s counting.) Also, wheelchair users aren’t allowed at the top.
It outdraws New York’s Empire State Building (pictured), big time.

From 2003 to 2008, the Parisian tower’s annual visitor count grew from 5.9 million to 6.9 million. (The Empire State Building’s operators report “more than 3.5 million” visitors a year.)

The Paris tower is open every day and includes two restaurants. Summer hours are 9 a.m. to 12:45 a.m.
It would make a fine billboard. In fact, it already has.In the late 1920s and early 1930s, three of its sides held vast advertisements for Citroen cars. While occupying Paris during World War II, German troops hung a sign from the tower trumpeting their victory. In 1979, a Greenpeace protester unfurled a sign that said “Save the Seals.”

A company called Apoteo Surprise will flash a personal message under the Eiffel Tower — for a price.
It wasn’t Eiffel’s only big-ticket gig.

By the time engineer and architect Gustave Eiffel began building the tower for the Exposition Universelle of 1889, he had already put up more than 50 bridges in Europe.

He was also a key part of the French effort to build a canal in Panama — an effort that fell through. (Americans redesigned the project and finished the job about 35 years later.)

The tower, meanwhile, took about two years to build, with completion March 31, 1889, several weeks ahead of the exposition’s opening day.
The paint is wet.

Or at least some of it is.

Twenty-five workers began brushwork in March on a top-to-bottom repainting job that’s expected to take 18 months. When done, they will have applied 60 tons of paint in three shades of brown (darkest at the bottom, lightest at the top).

The tower needs repainting every seven years, and it hasn’t always been brown.

For a brief spell in 1899, the tower was painted ochre yellow. And from 1954 to 1961, it was brownish red, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge.
It suffers from shrinkage.

Not counting its antenna, the iron tower is about 984 feet tall. But on cold days it’s roughly 6 inches shorter.

The amazing photographs that show the world's most famous landmarks replaced by cheap souvenirs

At a moment's glance this picture could be the real Big Ben.

But then you notice the hand below and the incredible optical illusion is revealed.

Tourist Michael Hughes today unveiled his extraordinary holiday snaps of the world's famous landmarks - perfectly blended with cheap souvenirs.

Michael, 56, stumbled across his unusual technique in 1998 and has perfected it after travelling to hundreds of famous sights.

His series of stunning photos include a Golden Gate fridge magnet slotted ideally into the San Francisco landscape.


A plastic Eiffel Tower toy between the camera and the steel structure creates an appearance that the top of the Paris landmark has been painted red, yellow and blue.

And a Big Ben money bank positioned next to the houses of parliament eclipses the original so well it could be mistaken for the real version.

Michael also held The Beatles' Abbey Road album in front of the famous London zebra crossing so it appears that the band members are actually walking across the road.


He has travelled to over 200 countries and has a collection of nearly 100 similar shots - but incredibly says he stumbled on the idea by accident.

British-born Michael, 56, who emigrated to Berlin, Germany with wife Marion, 52, and daughter Lea, 14, in 1983, said: 'I was on the tourist platform at the Lorelei cliffs next to the river Rhine when I held up a postcard I bought for my daughter.

'I was amazed because it just seemed to fill a massive grey hole that was in the sky and it was the exact position the photographer had taken the picture from.

'After that I noticed coffee cups from a shop near the Statue of Liberty had the statue printed on so I poured my drink on the floor, and position it in front of the statue.

'Since then taking the pictures has developed into a hobby and a passion to the point where I have been taking trips recently just to photograph a souvenir next to its landmark.'

Michael, who travels extensively with his job, said the hobby has progressed into a 'sport with its own rules'.

He arrives at the destination, visits the nearest souvenir and buys the cheapest souvenir.

Michael then takes up to 50 photographs with a wide angle lens on a digital camera until he has the ornament positioned in exact proportion to the landmark.
Enlarge Michael Hughes

He has photographed the Egyptian pyramids and Sphinx, London's red buses and the Berlin Brandenburg - all combined with their souvenirs.

The pictures have earned Michael more than 5 million hits on file-sharing website Flickr and an invite to appear on America's prime-time The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Michael, who works as a freelance photographer in Germany, added: 'I used to be a souvenir snob and I'd only buy the most expensive ornaments.

'Now I've turned that on its head by using cheap ones and doing this childish idea of putting them in the picture.

'Several photographers had toyed with the idea and some people do things like putting fingers above buildings but I'm the only person to do this.

'Thankfully it's actually very difficult to do it properly so nobody can copy me, though they do try.'

Michael has released 20 of the best images in a book called Souvenirs published by graphic designers Fivefootsix based in London.

He said: 'Souvenirs are actually something to prove somebody has had a life and they have been somewhere important.

'They are part of something sentimental that most people didn't like to admit to - I think they're pretty damn weird.'