Eiffel Tower
— iron the evening turns to gold.
Not only on a wall.
“Three hundred metres of iron lattice on the Champ de Mars, in the 7th, on the left bank of the Seine. Built for the 1889 World's Fair, meant to come down twenty years later; the radio antennas at the top earned it a reprieve. From a Métro window at dusk it appears for a second between buildings, then is gone. From the Trocadéro at the top of the hour after dark, twenty thousand bulbs sparkle for five minutes. There is no good angle on it that doesn't include other people taking the same photograph. That is part of seeing it.
Eiffel Tower, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Eiffel Tower stands on the Champ de Mars in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Palais de Chaillot across the Pont d'Iéna. It was built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch to the Exposition Universelle, the world's fair marking the centenary of the French Revolution. The wrought-iron lattice was designed by engineers Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier at Gustave Eiffel's company, with architectural detail by Stephen Sauvestre. At 330 metres including its antennas, it was the tallest structure in the world for forty-one years, until the Chrysler Building in New York went up in 1930. It still rises higher than anything else in Paris.
About twenty thousand small light bulbs were installed across the iron in time for the millennium and the tower has sparkled for five minutes on the hour, every hour after dark, ever since. The bronze-gold floodlight wash that lights the body of the structure is separate and steady; the sparkle is the bulbs flickering across the lattice. At sunset the iron itself goes briefly amber before the floodlights take over. The Trocadéro terrace across the Seine, set about three hundred metres back at slightly higher elevation, is the standard distance view; the close view from the Champ de Mars is what the tower is for.
Three levels are open to visitors. The first floor sits at 57 metres, the second at 116 metres, and the top deck at 276 metres — the highest publicly accessible viewpoint in the European Union. The stairs run only to the second floor, 674 steps from the ground; the top is lift-only. The tower has been open continuously since 1889 apart from a closure during the German occupation in the Second World War. Roughly seven million people visit each year, making it the most-visited paid monument in the world. Lines for same-day tickets at the south pillar can run two hours in summer; a timed-entry ticket booked online is the only way past the queue.