Around and About Paris: The Eiffel Tower
Every
year 2.5 million people converge on the 7th arrondissement to climb up
the Eiffel Tower and over 125 million have done so since it was
inaugurated in 1889. Parisians make up only 5% of the visitors and
often under pressure from their children. Most turn their noses up at
this emblem of touristy kitsch, as do quite a number of worldly
foreigners.
A hundred years ago, by contrast, people
responded to the Eiffel Tower with childlike spontaneity. On 31 March
1889, the second anniversary of the beginning of its construction, a
60-strong tail-coated, top-hatted and monocled party made the first
official ascent. Prime Minister Gustave Tirard gave up at the first
floor, followed by most of the others, but Gustave Eiffel persevered,
urging the last 10 breathless participants on to the top, where, with
Paris spreading at his feet, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur by the
Minister of Trade, Gustave Lockroy. The honour, however, should have
been shared by the two original designers, Koechkin and Nouguier, who
were engineers in Eiffel's company and whose project had won the
competition to build a striking monument for the 1889 Universal
Exhibition.
Officially, the
Exhibition was to commemorate the centenary of the French Revolution
and among the projects in competition was a gigantic guillotine in
honour of the victims of the Terror. But, above all, by organising the
Exhibition, the Third Republic, beleaguered by anarchists, revisionists
and Boulangistes, sought to boost patriotic feelings and achieve
political cohesion. The Exhibition was to mark the recovery of the
Republic and hail France's spectac;ular entry into modernity. It was to
bestow upon her international prestige and dazzle the world with
France's technological wizardry. Magnitude reigned supreme,
superlatives were on every lip.
The
gigantic Galérie des Machines, but especially the Eiffel Tower,
nicknamed 'La Colossale', was natually the highlight of the Fair.
Rising 318 metres above the ground, it was twice the height of the
tallest construcion hitherto ever built by man. Only in 1930 would the
Chrysler building in New York challenge it and put an end to its
supremacy, though never to its status as an emblem. Despite its
gigantic dimensions, the Tower weighed only 7,000 tons, an awesome
technical feat in itself. Yet, on 7 May 1889, the day of its solemn
inauguration, none of the lifts worked! Not everyone had greeted the
project favourably- there was a lot of apprehension and harsh criticism
against it. Some Parisians, endowed with exuberant imagination and too
panic-stricken to worry about mathematical accuracy, were terrified
that the 300-metre tower would sway and collapse, crushing the city all
the way to Montmartre! But the main campaign against the Eiffel Tower
was based on aesthetic grounds.
Guy
de Maupassant, after an impulse to pack up and move out of the capital,
decided instead to eat in the second-floor restaurant, the only spot in
Paris from where it could not be seen. He and 50 other celebrities from
the world of arts and letters - Charles Gounod, Leconte de Lisle,
François Coppée, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Garnier - signed a petition
in the name of Art and Civilisation, against the 'monstrous
construction', and showered on her multiple metaphors such as 'hollow
candlestick', 'solitary riddled suppository', 'bald umbrella'and
'skeleton'. The more progressive members of the intelligentsia thought
differently.
The painter
Robert Delaunay, one of the champions of modernity, preferred the Tower
to any other model, to judge by the number of paintings he devoted to
her. As part of the World Fair, the Eiffel Tower was meant to be an
ephemeral structure and only Eiffel's influential position enabled him
to obtain a 20-year concession to exploit it. In 1909 the enemies of
the Tower intensified their protest campaign, claiming that 'in any
case she is useless' (the use of the female gender puzzled Irwin Shaw
who saw it rather as a phallic symbol). Such an argument carried weight
in those utilitarian days. Fortunately, its height was its salvation:
wireless was beginning to be used to transmit messages, and the tall
iron tower proved to be a marvellous antenna.
The
first news bulletin was broadcast from the Eiffel Tower in 1925, and in
1935, a score of excited enthusiasts picked up its first television
broadcast, thrilled at the sight of a black disc bouncing on the
screen! So there she is, still standing firmly on her four spread-out
feet, the Iron Lady, the unassailable emblem of Paris. Even visitors
familiar with the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center feel
overwhelmed and uplifed as they approach it; all the more so, when they
stop to think that 15,000 metal pieces held together in perfect balance
by 2.5 million rivets (and 7 million rivet holes) and weighing a mere
7,000 tons, are all this gigantic structure amounts to - an
extraordinary, technological feat.
Hitler,
however, was an exception who, when rushing through Paris in 1940, went
to see it briefly and commented: "Is that all it is? It's ugly!" Some
people find it gracefully feminine, even during the day, when it cannot
conceal its raw metal framework under luminous guise. Cocteau's
metaphor, 'The Iron Shepherdsess', is perhaps the most apt, especially
as the Tower has eight lightning conductors and thus actually protects
Paris from lightning. During World War I nearly 50,000 words were
received and transmitted from the Eiffel Tower; this alone proved a
very good reason not to demolish it.
Mata
Hari led a double life as spy and nude dancer at the Eiffel Tower, at
the time, but it was this that gave her away. Identified through the
tower's radio transmissions as H21, she was captured and shot on 15
october 1917. The sporty community were also inspired by the Eiffel
Tower and came here to try their hand at different feats. Thus,
emulatting Icarus some eccentrics climbed it with their flying machines
or parachuting gear. One such attempt by an Austrian called Reichelt in
1912 ended a few seconds after it had begun, when he hit the ground
head first. In 1977 a French stunt man took off on a hang-glider from
the first floor, while an English couple parachuted from the third. In
the same year an American pilot succeeded in flying between the legs of
the tower and lost his flying licence as a consequence. There were
climbing contests and even a beauty contest in 1937 presided over by
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, when the minimum height required of
entrants was 1.75 metres as a token of respect for the tall iron
structure.
Acrobats, cyclists,
a ballerina and lovers have come here, but also hundreds of desperadoes
determined to put an end to a wretched or meaningless existence. Some
were locals and some had come up from the provinces; some even from
overseas, by train or by plane to die at her feet. Of the 380 people
who have hurled themselves from the Eiffel Tower, only one escaped
death - a young woman who in 1964 jumped from the first floor but
landed on the roof of a parked car. That year the number of suicides
rose alarmingly to an average of one per month, since when parapets
have been installed around the Tower.
On
a more cheerful note, do go to the top for an unforgettable view of
Paris. Those who can, will not regret completing the experience with a
dinner at the Jules Verne on the second floor, especially by night. You
may have understandable reservations about falling into the ultimate
tourist trap, but excellent cuisine is guaranteed and, with the western
secion of Paris floodlit at your feet, French talent for grandiose
town-planning is displayed here at its best.
Have you walked this part of Paris? What stands out in your mind? Visit our Sightseeing
Discussion Board. Thirza Vallois is the author of Around and About
Paris, Vol. 1, 2, and 3.Her video, "Three Perfect Days in Paris," aired
on all United Airlines international flights throughout September 1998
and on scores of television channels throughout the year. She is an
agrégée of the Sorbonne (the most prestigious of French university
degrees) and made excellent use of her academic background during her
eight years of research dedicated to Paris, which has culminated in her
books. For more information and Thirza's appearance schedule, please
visit her website at http://www.wfi.fr/vallois/
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