All About the Eiffel Tower  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

  Eiffel Tower Location Map

			ACCESS: METRO: Bir-Hakeim, Trocadéro, Ecole Militaire RER: Line C - Station Champ de Mars-Tour Eiffel BUS: 42, 69, 72, 82, 87 TAXI: Station Quai Branly, Piller Ouest
	Some Main Parisian Metro and RER Stations

Directions to the tower

Everyone knows that it is located in Paris [on the left bank], not far from the Seine River and across the river from Trocadéro. Its precise location is at Latitude 48 degrees 51 minutes, 32 seconds North; Longitude 002 degrees, 17 minutes, 45 seconds East.

Probably the most interesting way to get to the Eiffel tower is by taking the Métro to the Trocadéro station and walking from the Palais de Chaillot to the Seine. Besides fabulous views, especially when the Trocadéro fountains are in operation, you get a free show from the dancers and acrobats who perform around the Palais de Chaillot.
After crossing the Seine, on the Pont d'Léna, you are virtually at the foot of the tower. To the east of the tower there is a vast green esplanade flowing from the base of the tower; this is called the Parc du Champs-de-Mars. It extends all the way to the 18th-century Ecole Militaire [Military Academy] at the Parc's southeast end. This formal lawn was once a parade ground for French troops.

The École Militaire and the Eiffel Tower face each other across the Champ de Mars, west of Invalides. The École was built, as a military academy, by Louis XV during the 
18th century.

 Tower after 2000 Renovation

A closer route would be to take the metro to the Bir-Hakeim station and then walking around the corner to the tower or taking the RER to the Champs-de-Mars -Tour-Eiffel station. But, neither of these two alternatives will be as awe inspiring as would be the Trocadéro approach.
 

                          Background

Controversy

Just after the commencement of the Tour Eiffel's construction, the controversial tower elicited strong resistance from the public. A petition of 300 names — including those of Maupassant, Emile Zola, Charles Garnier [architect of the Paris Opéra Garnier], and Dumas the Younger — protesting its construction, was presented to the Paris city government. The petition read, "We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigor and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower." Nature lovers also were against the tower. They thought that it would interfere with the flight of birds over Paris. The newspapers of the day contributed to the onslaught. The press likened it to a "truly tragic street lamp", a "belfry skeleton", a "high and skinny pyramid of iron ladders", an "odious column of bolted metal", a "half built factory pipe", a "Tower of Babel"...

Eiffel's Response

On February 14, 1887, Eiffel elegantly replied to his critics, in part stating that "...the curvature of the monument's four outer edges, which is as mathematical calculation dictated it should be ... will give a great impression of strength and beauty..."          

Tower Acceptance

Today, it is widely considered to be one of the most striking pieces of architectural art in the world. Renowned artists such as Chagall,   Gustave Eiffel

Rousseau, Utrillo, and Delaunay  had admired the proposed structure. Others, such as Camille Pissaro, Raoul Dufy, Maurice Utrillo, Georges Seurat and others have admired the tower sufficiently to paint it.             By the arrival of the roaring twenties, the Eiffel Tower had transformed, in the minds of the French, from being merely a fairground curiosity to being a symbol of avant-garde modernity. It was delightful in its piercing ethereal expression of structure through space. Its purposelessness and purity of design endeared it as the expression of the city and country that had created it.

Eiffel Tower Poster