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Tour Eiffel

The Tour Eiffel stands on the Champ de Mars in Paris, a wrought-iron lattice tower known round the world. Gustave Eiffel's company designed and built it between 1887 and 1889. It anchored the 1889 World's Fair, staged to celebrate a century since the French Revolution. At 330 metres it out-topped every other structure on earth until New York's Chrysler Building passed it in 1930.

Three levels stand open to visitors, with restaurants on the first and second. Stairs or a lift carry you upward, and more than 600 steps reach the second level. The top observation deck sits 276 metres above the ground, the highest publicly accessible point in the European Union. Its ironwork came together from over 18,000 pieces and two and a half million rivets. The foundations, especially the legs nearest the Seine, demanded careful planning.

Paris's leading artists and intellectuals protested the design at first, yet the tower won the city over. Locals call it La dame de fer, the Iron Lady. France protected it as a monument historique in 1964, and UNESCO added it to a World Heritage Site in 1991. Gustave Eiffel kept a private apartment at the top, where he once received guests such as Thomas Edison.

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Paris
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