When it officially opened in 1889 as part of the Paris Exposition, the Eiffel Tower was mocked by some of the city's greatest artists as monstrous, barbaric and useless. Subjectively speaking, according to the standards at the time, it was the tallest man-made structure in the world, which it would be for forty years, constructed in celebration of technological prowess, industrial advancement and the French Revolution centennial. Up to date, the monument is still one of France's most iconic landmarks and tourist destination that receives around 7 million visitors annually.
None of which would have occurred if it were demolished, like was done early on in the tower's existence. Or if Montreal could lease it—what the mayor of Montreal attempted for its own 1967 Expo. (Would they have ever returned it and rebuilt it at its original location?)
In fact, if the Eiffel Tower's "walls" had voices, they'd have a whole collection of pretty great tales to share, many of which are not commonly known by the general populace. Thanks to the assistance of Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, a fifth-generation relative of Gustave Eiffel, the engineer-turned-businessman who constructed the tower, Bloomberg was given a tour and uncovered facts (and secrets) you never even knew to inquire about.
Not always that hue.
What color is the Eiffel Tower? The answer varies slightly day to day. It's not, as one might expect, the natural, weathered bronze of the metal, but a tapestry of paint colors that have been in a state of transition as old layers flake off and new ones are applied. Now, a little more than half of the tower is encased in specially created color "Eiffel Tower Brown"; the rest is either newly painted with a different color or is being sanded off. Changes over the decades haven't necessarily been subtle themselves. Seven makeovers in the form of paint colors have been approved for the landmark, and this latest pick definitely won't be the last.
Five times in Gustave Eiffel's lifetime alone was the tower painted a different color. Metal components were a bright "Venetian red" prior to assembly, next coated heavily with a reddish-brown paint for the opening. Several years afterwards the entire monument was ochre brown coated, and in 1899 gained what must have been its most dramatic appearance: a five-stage gradation of yellow-orange towards the base, pale yellow to the top.
If you can't quite visualize any of that, you might be able to soon enough. Following an examination of the design colors of the entire tower, architect Pierre-Antoine Gatier resolved that its next coat would utilize the "yellow-brown" color utilized in 1907 and favored by Gustave Eiffel. The painting process is ongoing, but there is also a simultaneous attempt to remove all of the previous coats, which weigh a total of 350 tons. The task, done manually, will take decades to finish.
It was never meant to exist as anything but a pop-up.
The plans for the Eiffel Tower on the Champs de Mars were leased to Gustave Eiffel for a 20-year concession, but even before that was allowed to expire in 1909 the future of the monument found itself in severe trouble. Indeed, since the world's fair of 1889, the tower's popular appeal and popularity had begun to decline, and talk of knocking down the entire complex grew more fervorously. In 1903, the commissions ordered by the city of Paris had split votes on whether to demolish or leave standing the gigantic edifice. The ambiguity would linger for decades.
It saved France.
Below them, however, is the remainder of an installation that helped salvage the Eiffel Tower from destruction and possibly saved France in World War I. They're out of view to the average citizen—under the Champs de Mars gardens south of the south pillar.
There, a room now known as "the bunker"—and still used for tower operations—stored initial versions of wireless telegraphy equipment installed by Eiffel and the French military. Science was an ongoing passion of Eiffel's, and he decided at an early stage to use the tower to do research in the areas of meteorology and aerodynamics. Then when pressure grew about what would become of the monument, he volunteered to underwrite military experiments into the new field of wireless communications. In early experiments in an above-ground shack at the tower's base, a young lieutenant was able to establish contact with forts in eastern France, then Tunisia and even Canada. A more robust underground station was constructed in 1910, thus improving the tower's survival prospects.
The Eiffel Tower proved its strategic value four years later. In September 1914 the French utilized the communications system to tap into the German army's communications, enabling France to stop its advance in the Battle of the Marne. With that, Gustave Eiffel signed his concession for another 70 years.
It added height in 2022.
Since its early wireless-communications experimentation, the Eiffel Tower has been a literal beacon. It is now a digital radio and TV transmitter with 116 antennae. The latest addition was mounted in 2022 by helicopter, lifting the structure to a height of 330 meters (1,083 feet).
The destination restaurant was included in Eiffel's plan, but an ideal kitchen wasn't.
When the Eiffel Tower first opened, its first floor welcomed stunningly decorated restaurants serving French, Alsatian and Russian specialties and an Anglo-American bar, all part of Gustave Eiffel's forward-thinking vision to attract travelers. But, in the kitchen, it's never been that easy.
Take second-floor restaurant Jules Verne, the tower's most popular stop since it received its first Michelin star four decades ago. It accommodated an informal dinner by French President Emmanuel Macron and his guest Donald Trump in 2017 with their wives. In the past this year, it was one of a mere eight in France to earn two Michelin stars, and the Gault & Millau guidebook had named its chef, Frédéric Anton, "Chef of the Year" for 2025. Yet Jules Verne is subject to a strict set of limits no other restaurant in Paris would ever face.
To begin with, gas stoves—albeit the personal favorites of chefs for delicate temperature control and absolutely level heat—are forbidden on safety reasons. Products may arrive in the kitchen by means of a service elevator and in the early morning hours, which means that if some rather celebratory party orders up all the caviar in the joint, the chefs can't restock it in the middle of the shift.
There is also tonnage put on whatever is held in the dining and kitchen space at all times. They measure what is being taken off of the tower, and whatever replaces it must be an equal or lighter tonnage. When Sodexo SA acquired the Jules Verne concession in 2018 and opted to replace the stove, for example, the firm only had access to specific models—which happened to be too large to fit in the lift and had to be dismantled and taken up in sections.
There is a hidden floor that very few individuals ever get to see.
Tourists taking the elevator from the second to the third floor with keen eyes will catch a glimpse of a mid-point platform. The elevator has not been making stops there on regular tourist trips in over four decades.
The hidden floor is a remnant of the days when the tower was an older model, when before technology became so sophisticated there was no way of accessing the top floor in one step. During the first few weeks after the tower opened on March 31, 1889, there was only access to the top by 1,710 steps. Official sanction, however, was soon forthcoming to open five lifts in the tower, whose path and capacity would be record-breaking. For the topmost level, Eiffel asked an old classmate at engineering school and inventor, Félix Léon Edoux, to design a system that would transport visitors the last 160 meters from level two to level three.
With Edoux's two-stage system, tourists would travel one elevator to an in-between level, then get off and transfer to another for the final leg. It was cumbersome, inefficient and prone to fail in winter, when the hydraulics would freeze. But it wasn't replaced until 1983, when the double-cabin electric elevators of the modern era were installed.
And what did become of the old platform, left to disuse now? It serves as storage, and the elevators can bring passengers there in case of a crisis. "It's sort of a hidden spot where very few people ever go," says Yeatman-Eiffel.
Less than two individuals are thought to have ever slept in the apartment of the tower, and Eiffel wasn't among them.
Part of the €35.30 ($36.81) adult fare to climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower is a peek at a small restored model of Gustave Eiffel's "apartment," with wax figures of the engineer, his daughter Claire, and Thomas Edison, who came with a phonograph.
"Apartment" merely indicates "rooms" here. It had three small offices, reception room with piano, kitchenette and small bathroom. But Eiffel was fond of the view there, and from 1903 to 1912 it served as an office where he could make meteorological observations and issue scientific reports; he used it also as a site for receiving VIP guests such as Sarah Bernhardt, Buffalo Bill and a string of European monarchs. It was his initial foray into marketing the tower, and himself as a businessperson. What he did not do was spend the night in it. There wasn't even a bed.
"There are only two individuals we can say absolutely slept there," says Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, who has a picture of his grandparents at the top of the tower on the morning after their wedding night in August 1935, Champagne glasses in hand. They were surely near where there's now a Champagne bar.
You can purchase a piece of it.
Its 7,300-ton metal support structure consists of 18,038 iron pieces and 2.5 million rivets. But the figure has varied by decade as a result of renovations that involved sections being removed or replaced along the way. Tons of intact original Eiffel Tower cast iron and equipment, in fact, are worth an ever greater fortune these days, mothballed in a warehouse outside Paris; their location is so tightly kept secret that even the great-grand-nephew and namesake Yeatman-Eiffel hasn't a clue where they would be.
It all was removed from the tower in the early 1980s, at the same massive restoration that refurbished the elevator system between the second floor and the third floor. Along the way, a genuine round staircase was dismantled and cut into 24 sections. One is displayed on the first floor of the tower, and three are located in French museums. The others were auctioned. In 2020 the privately owned No. 17 section in Canada was sold at auction for €253,500. If that rate of return continues on the remaining metal, the discovery is most probably multimillion dollars.
The Olympics reminded one of that hidden hoard of metal; some of it was used in the 5,084 bronze, silver and gold medals presented. "We combined the strongest symbol of the Games, the medal, with the strongest symbol of Paris and France to the world, the Eiffel Tower," said Tony Estanguet, president of the organizing committee.
But anyone can purchase a small piece of the tower for under six figures—at least for now. A small production of 600 round-headed rivets produced from salvaged tower iron during restoration is on sale in the visitors' shop for €525 per one. You can even purchase them online, no visit to Paris necessary.
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