Eiffel Tower
— the lattice the sky shows through.
Not only on a wall.
“Three hundred and thirty metres of wrought iron above the Champ-de-Mars. The thing nobody tells you about the lattice: close up it is mostly sky, painted over by ironwork only where the structure asks for it. From the Trocadéro it reads as a single shape; from the lawn beneath the legs it reads as a cathedral of light. On the hour after sunset, for five minutes, twenty thousand bulbs flicker across the frame. The crowd does not say much during those five minutes.
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, on the Left Bank of the Seine in Paris's 7th arrondissement. Gustave Eiffel's engineering firm designed it as the entrance arch for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, marking the centenary of the French Revolution. Originally 300 metres tall, antenna additions over the next century brought it to its current 330 metres. The structure carries about 10,100 tonnes of puddle iron across 18,038 individual pieces, held by roughly two and a half million rivets. Three lifts climb the legs to the first and second floors; a separate double-decker lift runs from the second to the top. The Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel has operated it under city concession since 1980.
The tower has two different evening signatures. Through the day the brown paint (officially called 'Eiffel Tower brown' and reapplied every seven years) reads against whatever sky Paris is having. At dusk the structure switches on to a sodium-amber glow that holds through the night. On the hour, for five minutes, twenty thousand strobe bulbs sparkle across the lattice. The sparkle was installed for the 2000 millennium and made permanent in 2003. From the Trocadéro across the Seine, it reads as a single field; from underneath the legs it shatters into individual flashes.
The tower is open every day of the year. Lifts run from about 9:30 in the morning until late evening for the top, with a stair option to the second floor for visitors who want the slower way up. The first floor sits at 57 metres, the second at 116, and the summit at 276 metres. An adult lift ticket to the top runs about €29; the stair ticket is roughly half that. The Société d'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel handles ticketing through toureiffel.paris; security screening at the perimeter fence adds about fifteen minutes most days, more on summer afternoons. The Champ-de-Mars beneath the tower is always free, and most photographers prefer it to the platforms.