Paris: Vues Artistiques et Panoramiques

1950

Brasch Pamphlets B1.23

Paris: Papeghin

‘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…’. So appeared this comment in Le Temps on 14 February 1887 on what is perhaps today the cultural icon of Paris – and France: the Eiffel Tower. Conceived by engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier, and finally patented by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), this 324-metre structure was constructed between 1887–89 as the entrance to the Exposition Universelle, a world’s fair held to celebrate the centennial of the French Revolution. The Tower is one of the most visited monuments in the world; 6.91 million ascended it in 2015.