Eiffel tower 3d puzzle

The Eiffel Tower — What Americans Actually Know About It

Let's be honest about the Eiffel Tower's reputation in American culture. It appears in more rom-coms set in Paris than any actual Parisian landmark. It is the backdrop for every American character who has just had a realization about love, career or the inadequacy of their previous life. It features in the dreams of approximately every American who has ever said "I really want to go to Paris someday"  which is to say, a significant portion of the population.

The clichés are real. They are also, once you've actually stood under it, entirely justified.

The Tower was designed by Gustave Eiffel and built between 1887 and 1889 as the entrance arch for the 1889 World's Fair in Paris. It was supposed to be temporary a 20-year installation that would be dismantled in 1909. The Parisians hated it at first. The artists and intellectuals of the city signed a petition against it, calling it a "blot on the landscape" and a "hollow candlestick." Guy de Maupassant reportedly ate lunch at the Tower's restaurant every day not because he liked it, but because it was the only place in Paris where he didn't have to look at it.

Then something happened. People started climbing it. And looking out. And the Tower started transmitting radio signals (which saved it from demolition). And gradually, then all at once, the Eiffel Tower became not just acceptable but definitionally beautiful, the thing by which Paris is recognized, by which France is recognized, by which the idea of a spectacular city visible from every angle is recognized.

It is the most visited paid monument in the world. Approximately 7 million people visit it every year. There have been more photographs taken of the Eiffel Tower than of almost any other object in human history.

And when you ask Americans what they think of when they think of France, the answer  before the croissants, before the wine, before the language  is almost always the Tower.

The France–America Connection

There is a particular resonance to an American building the Eiffel Tower in wood. The relationship between France and the United States is one of the oldest alliances in history,  the French provided critical military support during the American Revolution, and the Statue of Liberty was France's gift to America in 1886, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and with its iron structure engineered by Gustave Eiffel himself.

The Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty share not just an engineer but a philosophy: both were built to demonstrate what the modern era could accomplish, and both were immediately controversial and are now universally beloved.

Building the Eiffel Tower in wood is also, in some sense, an act of transatlantic friendship, taking the most French thing in the world and making it yours, piece by piece, with your own hands.