The Eiffel Tower — La Tour Eiffel in French — rises 330 metres (1,083 feet) above the Champ de Mars on the Left Bank of the Seine, making it the tallest structure in Paris and one of the most recognisable silhouettes on earth. It was designed by structural engineer Gustave Eiffel's firm, with key contributions from engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier and architect Stephen Sauvestre, who added the decorative arched bases and ornamental details that softened its industrial skeleton. Construction began in January 1887 and was completed in just over two years, on 31 March 1889 — a feat achieved by a workforce of 300 on-site ironworkers who assembled 18,038 individual iron pieces held together by 2.5 million rivets. The tower was inaugurated as the entrance arch to the 1889 Exposition Universelle, a World's Fair celebrating the centennial of the French Revolution, and Eiffel himself climbed its 1,710 steps to plant a French tricolour at the summit.
The tower was never meant to be permanent. Designed under a 20-year concession, it was scheduled for demolition in 1909, a fate avoided only because its iron lattice mast proved invaluable as a radiotelegraph transmission tower. In 1914, it played a direct military role: the antenna broadcast jamming signals that disrupted German communications during the opening weeks of World War I, and it relayed the orders that mobilised the famous "Taxis of the Marne," shuttling French reserves to the front. Repainted every seven years (it has been repainted 19 times since 1889 and currently wears a shade called "Eiffel Tower Brown"), the structure weighs 10,100 tonnes and is engineered to sway no more than 9 centimetres in high winds. In summer, thermal expansion causes the iron to stretch, raising the summit by up to 15 centimetres.
Visitors access three public levels. The first floor, at 57 metres, houses a glass-floored observation section installed in 2014 that lets you look straight down through 4.5 centimetres of transparent walkway to the Champ de Mars below — it has become one of the tower's most photographed spots despite (or because of) the vertigo it induces. The second floor at 115 metres offers the clearest panoramic views of Paris, with Sacré-Cœur, Notre-Dame, and the Arc de Triomphe all visible simultaneously on a clear day. The summit at 276 metres (the top accessible platform) contains a reconstruction of Gustave Eiffel's private apartment, where he once hosted Thomas Edison, complete with period furniture and wax figures. The tower draws approximately 7 million visitors per year, making it the world's most-visited paid monument, having welcomed over 300 million people since 1889.
Pre-booking tickets online is strongly recommended, as on-site queues frequently exceed 2–3 hours during summer months. The tower opens daily, with extended night hours in summer when the famous light show — 20,000 bulbs installed in 1999 that cause the structure to sparkle for five minutes every hour after dark — draws crowds to the Trocadéro esplanade on the opposite bank of the Seine. Stairs are open to the second floor for visitors who prefer to climb; the lift runs to all three levels. The nearest Métro station is Bir-Hakeim (Line 6), which offers one of Paris's most cinematic approach views as it runs along an elevated viaduct directly toward the tower.
