17 Facts you didn’t know about the Eiffel Tower
- The Eiffel tower is one of the most famous architectural landmarks of Paris.
- It was constructed in 1889 to commemorate the centennial of the French Revolution and to flaunt France’s industrial prowess before the world.
- The Eiffel Tower is named after Gustave Eiffel, a French civil engineer who is credited with the designing of this tower.
- It is known as La Tour Eiffel in French. It also has the nickname La Dame de Fer which means ‘The iron Lady.’
- It measures 1050 feet in height and held the record for being the tallest man-made structure in the world for almost 40 years before being outshined by the Chrysler Building in New York.
- It is made of iron and weighs about 10,000 tonnes.
- It is painted after every seven years to protect it from rust.
- About 50 tonnes of paint is used to paint the entire tower.
- It is painted in three shades of brown, darkest at the bottom and brightest at the top.
- More than 4 tons of dusters & cleaning cloths, 400 litres of detergents and 25,000 bin bags are needed to clean the Eiffel Tower.
- The heat of the sun causes the tower to grow about 6 inches.
- There are more than 5 billion lights on the Eiffel Tower.
- The Eiffel Tower has 108 storeys, with 1,710 steps. However, visitors can only climb stairs to the first platform.
- There are two huge elevators to take the visitors to the upper platforms. These elevators cover a distance of around 103,000 km in a year, which is about 2.5 times the circumference of the entire Earth.
- The tower also houses two restaurants, several buffets, a banquet hall, a champagne bar and many unique gift shops.
- It is open for tourists and visitors 365 days a year.
- The Eiffel Tower was initially intended to be dismantled and sold as scrap 20 years after its construction, but the people of the city gradually fell in love with this structure and this never happened.
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