The Eiffel Tower is getting a new look under a major renovation project that will see the monument painted yellow-brown instead of “Eiffel Tower Brown,” a shade developed in the 1960s.
Photographer: Thérèse Verrat & Vincent Touss for Bloomberg BusinessweekEight Untold Secrets of the Eiffel Tower
From the unlikely couple who spent the night there to the seven colors it’s worn over the years, there’s a lot you don’t know about the iconic Parisian monument.
When the Eiffel Tower was inaugurated at the 1889 Paris Exposition, it was derided by some of the city’s leading artists as useless, monstrous and barbaric. By objective measures it was the tallest structure in the world, a claim it would retain for four decades, built to celebrate the triumph of industrialization, technological prowess and the centenary of the French Revolution. To this day, the monument remains one of France’s foremost landmarks and a tourist attraction that draws some 7 million visitors per year.
None of it could have happened if it had been torn down, as almost happened in the tower’s early days. Or if Montreal had succeeded in borrowing it—which the city’s mayor tried to pull off for its own Expo in 1967. (Would it really have been returned and reconstructed in its original location?)