Fun Facts About Eiffel Tower
Many fun facts about the Eiffel Tower exist that makes this tower more interesting than just a metallic tourist attraction. The Eiffel Tower has been standing since March 1889, which was a little over two years since construction began. The following fun facts about the Eiffel Tower are good knowledge to have, especially if you want to impress the French as a tourist.
Fun Facts about the Eiffel Tower’s Structure and Design
Gustave Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower and was the same engineer that drew the blueprints for the internal structure of The Statue of Liberty. The Tower, even though it was designed by others, was named after Gustave since he was the main architect.
There are 2,500,000 rivets embedded in the Eiffel Tower and the total weight of the metal is 7000 tons. If you include everything else, the weight of the tower is well over 10,000 tons. When the structure was being designed, the engineers decided that it needed to be painted so they hired 25 painters for the task. Every seven years, the entire structure is repainted so that the metal doesn’t rust and it takes about 50 tons of paint to do so.
Approximately 50 designers and engineers created over 5,000 drawings of the different parts of the Eiffel Tower. The tower wasn’t fully constructed on site: a workshop was used and many of the workers built parts of the Eiffel Tower off-site.
Currently, the Eiffel Tower is the talent building in Paris and was the tallest building in the world until 1930.
Fun Facts as a Tourist Attraction
In 1909, the Eiffel Tower almost was dismantled and sold for scrap metal. But because a telecommunications company wanted to use the tower to broadcast signals, the Eiffel Tower was saved.
Below the first platform you can see names of French scientists and famous people engraved on the sides. Once you get to the top, you may be able to see about 40 miles out, if it’s a clear day.
A restaurant on the first platform is named because of its sea level measurement: it is called Altitude 95.
The Eiffel Tower should be on your list of things to see if you go to Europe and knowing a little bit about the tower before you go can make visiting it more fun.