Eiffel Tower's Storied Past

Eiffel Tower's Storied Past
(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Known for great art, France’s Eiffel Tower brings technical and aesthetic genius into form in one of the world’s most iconic monuments. It was France that coined the phrase les grands travaux (large-scale engineering works). Eiffel’s tower has become synonymous with Paris and has appeared in over 200 films.
PUBLIC ART OR PUBLIC OUTRAGE?
We the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris, do protest with all our vigor and all our indignation, in the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower. Thus read the protest signed by Guy de Maupassant, Alexander Dumas, Emile Zola, Charles Gounod, and Paul Verlaine among others. While some well-known Parisians voiced disapproval, the tower became an instant hit, fascinating the public and inspiring feats of bravado. In 1923, the man who would become mayor of the district of Montmartre bicycled down the tower using one of its legs as a sloping ramp. In 1954, a mountain climber scaled its height, and thirty years later two Englishmen parachuted from the top

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