The Eiffel Tower of Paris by Hilke Maunder

About "The Eiffel Tower of Paris"

by Hilke Maunder

About the artwork

It is the Parisian landmark par excellence: the Eiffel Tower. Its views of Paris, its evening sparkle, its restaurants and its glass floor make for unforgettable moments from early in the morning until late at night.

No landmark is more immortalised on Instagram. No building attracts more selfies or is searched for more on Google. More than seven million visitors stand in front of it every year and marvel. For them, it is inconceivable that Gustave Eiffel's bold steel construction once met with massive criticism - or should even have been demolished.

"Monstrous!" "Tasteless!" "Ridiculous!", artists and intellectuals wrote in protest letters about the building after its completion. And yet they were so fascinated that they captured the bold construction on canvas. They captured the dynamics of the tower in new colours and new shapes. However, as early as 1930, the Tour Eiffel had to relinquish its status as the tallest building in the world to the 319 metre high Chrysler Building in New York. Since 2010, Dubai's Burj Khalifa skyscraper has been the tallest building in the world at 828 metres.

Almost 300 metres high - and today even 330 metres up to the top of the antenna - la dame de fer was built for the 1889 World's Fair from 18,000 steel parts held together by 2.5 million rivets. Today, nobody would think of demolishing it: La tour Eiffel is the symbol par excellence of the French capital Paris!