The design of the Eiffel Tower is the product of the minds of Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, two senior engineers who worked for the Compagnie des Établissements Eiffel.
The design came about after discussion about a suitable centrepiece for the proposed 1889 Exposition Universelle, a world fair intended to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. Construction on the tower began on 28 January 1887, after a number of years of delay.
A number of Paris and France’s best artists protested against the construction of the tower, writing the following petition, which was published in the Le Temps newspaper on 14 February 1887.
“We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection … of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream.
And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.”
Construction on the tower was completed on 15 March, 1889, and it eventually opened its gates to the public on 31 March, 1889.
It was due to be demolished in 1909, as the company could only secure a 20-year contract with the city.
However, the tower had become an efficient means of communication, so the City of Paris elected to keep the tower.
At 324m tall, it held the record for the tallest man-made structure in the world for 41 years, until construction on the Chrysler Tower in the USA was completed in 1930.
More than 250 million people have visited the tower since it was completed, and in 2015, it saw 6,91 million visitors. The tower is the most-visited paid monument in the world, receiving an average of 25 000 visitors every day.
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