Origins and Construction of the Eiffel Tower
It was at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the date that marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution, that a great competition was launched in the Journal Officiel.
The first digging work started on the 28th January 1887. On the 31st March 1889, the Tower had been finished in record time – 2 years, 2 months and 5 days – and was established as a veritable technical feat.
Gustave Eiffel
The Tower is not Gustave Eiffel’s only creation. This enthusiast and true genius was able to go beyond his own limits to bequeath to us monuments such as the dome on the Nice Observatory, the metallic structure of the Statue of Liberty, not to mention the Bordeaux railway bridge.
The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be destroyed only 20 years after its construction. To remedy the situation, Gustave Eiffel had the ingenious idea of crediting it with a scientific purpose – the Tower was saved!
Almost from the very opening of the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, visitors could access the floors of the monument by taking the lifts. A veritable technical triumph for the time, as never before had the limits of such heights and loads been broken, the lifts offered hundreds of thousands of visitors the possibility to securely climb the Tower to embrace the whole of Paris.
For the Universal Exhibition of 1889, four majestic wooden pavilions designed by Stephen Sauvestre decked the platform on the first floor. Each restaurant could seat 500 people.
Every evening, the Eiffel Tower is adorned with its golden covering and sparkles for 5 minutes every hour on the hour, while its beacon shines over Paris.
Hospitality And Tourism 