History of the Eiffel Tower
In 1886, an open competition was held for the centerpiece of the 1889 Exposition, in May of that year, Eiffel's proposal was chosen. The contract for building of the tower was signed in January 1887, and work on foundations of the tower started shortly.
The foundations were completed in June, followed by the erection of the ironwork.
The process of erecting the Eiffel Tower is very different from erecting a regular skyscraper, they created pieces of components of the tower in a factory in suburb of Paris, and shipped the finished components to the construction site of the tower using horse-drawn carts, then these components were joined together using rivets on the construction site, about 2.5 million rivets were used, no drilling or shaping was done on site.
Three hundred workers participated in the construction of the tower, excluding the workers in the factory for creating the components of the tower.
The tower was structurally completed in the end of March 1889, only some lifts, facilities and some minor elements were still being installed or built. The tower opened to public on May 6, nine days after the opening of the exposition, at that time still no lifts were in service, even so, there were still nearly 30,000 visitors climb up to the top of the tower through its staircases, before the lifts entered service on May 26.
If the Eiffel Tower was built today, it would cost about US$31 million.
The Eiffel Tower was permitted to stand there for just 20 years, it was to be teared down in 1909, but the City of Paris remained the tower as it was realized that the tower could be used for broadcasting purposes. This is not the only time the Eiffel Tower survived from potential demolition, in August 1944 during World War II, Hitler ordered General Dietrich von Choltitz, the military governor of Paris, to demolish the tower, but Von Choltitz disobeyed the order, the Eiffel Tower survived again. And in 1967, the mayor of Montreal negotiated a secret agreement with Charles de Gaulle for the tower to be dismantled and temporarily relocated to Montreal to serve as a landmark and tourist attraction during Expo 67. The company operating the Eiffel Tower refused to do so, as they fear that the tower would not be permitted to be restored in its original location again.
In 1957, the current antenna atop the tower was added, bumping the height of the tower to 324 meters from 300 meters.
Tourism:
The Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world, more than 250 million people have visited the tower since it was completed in 1889. And about 7 million people ascend the tower every year, this amount of people is two times of that of the Empire State Building in New York City.
The admission tickets for the Eiffel Tower can be booked by clicking here.
As mentioned earlier, visitors can ascend to all 3 levels of the tower at different heights, the highest accessible position is the observation deck on the Third Level, it's at 276 meters(906 ft) high above the ground, and is the highest observation deck in Europe Union and Western Europe, by contrast, the second highest one is the observatory on the Shard in London, which is 245 meters high.
From the observation deck visitors can enjoy the panoramic view of Paris, getting the clear aerial views of all the notable landmark buildings in the city, like the Seine, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, etc.
A glass floor was installed on the First Level of the tower during the a refurbishment in 2014, visitors can stand on it to watch down at the views below it.
The Eiffel Tower is located at the intersection of the quai Branly and the Pont d'Iéna, on the Champ de Marscan, some convenient ways to get there is by metro or RER, by taxi, or simply walk towards the tower if it's not far from you. The nearest Paris Métro station is Bir-Hakeim and the nearest RER station is Champ de Mars-Tour Eiffel.
There are lots of replicas of the Eiffel Tower around the world, the largest one is a 1:2 scale replica in Las Vegas.
And Macau also has a 1:2 scale replica, built in 2016 as a part of The Venetian Macao.
Including the one in Macau, China has a total of three replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the most similar one is a 1:3 replica in Hangzhou, even its surrounding area is very similar to that of the original. Another one is in a theme park in Shenzhen called Window of the World.
The Kings Island in Ohio also has a 1:3 scale replica of the Eiffel Tower, it's built on the entrance to the park and its top offers a view of the entire park.
Aside from the replicas, the Eiffel Tower has inspired the designs of some other towers in the world, the most notable one of them is the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo, Japan, the tower is extremely similar to the Eiffel Tower in terms of shape and height, and it's also a iron lattice tower, being used as an observation tower for tourism.
