From 'eyesore' to icon: a brief history of the Eiffel Tower

Who designed the Eiffel Tower?

The tower was the brainchild of entrepreneur Gustave Eiffel, architect Stephen Sauvestre, and engineers Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier. Eiffel’s reputation preceded him – he owned a metal works business and was the genius behind the steelwork frame of New York’s Statue of Liberty, built three years earlier.

Construction of the Eiffel Tower required 7,300 tonnes of iron, the sweat of more than 300 labourers, and a fleet of steam-powered cranes and hydraulic jacks to manoeuvre the giant girders. Work began in January 1887, and was completed relatively quickly, in just 796 days, a feat that trumpeted French industrial accomplishment as much as the completed tower itself. At 300m high, it immediately entered the records books as the tallest structure in the world, a position it held until the unveiling of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930.

At the base of the Eiffel Tower were four wooden pavilions, which housed restaurants to serve visitors to the exposition, each of which could seat 500 people. They are likely to have been very busy indeed, as the Tower received 1,953,122 visitors during the almost six months of that year’s World’s Fair.

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What were the first reactions to the Eiffel Tower?

Not everyone was so welcoming of the new structure – many Parisians thought the Tower was an eyesore that clashed with the older, grander architecture of the French capital. Novelist Guy de Maupassant would often eat in one of the restaurants at the base of the Eiffel Tower, as it was the only place he could do so without having to look at it. Along with other Parisian artists and authors, de Maupassant wrote a letter to the city’s government protesting against the construction. Some were also concerned for the safety of those who had to climb to its upper reaches.

Many Parisians thought the Eiffel Tower was an eyesore

But the Tower became much more than a tourist attraction, doubling as a testing ground for serious scientific experiments that proved its wider worth. Gustave Eiffel installed a laboratory within the structure and invited scientists to use it: a version of Foucault’s pendulum was installed to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation, and a wind tunnel was also built beside it. The structure became an astronomical observation point, as well as a beacon and communications post. To symbolically ensure the Tower’s place in science history, Eiffel had the names of 72 scientists, mathematicians and engineers engraved into the Tower’s arches during construction.

Initial plans for the Eiffel Tower stated that it was only intended to stand for 20 years but, in 1909, it was given the green light to remain. In the intervening two decades it had proven vital in sending wireless telegraph messages around the world. During World War I, the Tower’s radiotelegraphic transmitter was used to intercept enemy communications and even helped uncover the double agent Mata Hari.

Such longevity comes at a price, however. The Eiffel Tower (and the 2.5 million rivets holding it together) have to be repainted every seven years – by hand – and though the 10,000 gas lamps are long gone, 20,000 golden bulbs now illuminate it.

The building of the Eiffel Tower is explored in an episode of Witness History on the BBC World Service.

This content first appeared in the March 2020 issue of BBC History Revealed