Eiffel Tower Facts and Figures
Heights, weights, dates and the numbers behind them, all from the monument’s own published record. If you are here to choose a way up instead, the guided tours of the Eiffel Tower are one page across.
The tower in figures
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Height today, to the tip of the antennas | 1,083 ft (330 m) |
| Height as built, without antennas | 1,024 ft (312 m) |
| Width on the ground | 410 ft — the four piers form a 410 ft square |
| Width of one pier | 82 ft |
| First floor | 187 ft (57 m), 14,485 sq ft |
| Second floor | 377 ft (115 m), 4,692 sq ft |
| Third floor, the top | 906 ft (276 m), 820 sq ft |
| Lifts, esplanade to second floor | 5 |
| Lifts, second floor to the top | 2 × 2 duolifts |
| Weight of the metal frame | 7,300 tons |
| Total weight | 10,100 tons |
| Rivets | 2,500,000 |
| Iron parts | 18,038 |
| Workshop drawings | 5,300 |
| Visitors a year | almost 7,000,000, about 75% from outside France |
| Visitors since 1889 | almost 300,000,000 |
Built in 2 years, 2 months and 5 days
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| June 1884 | Maurice Koechlin and Émile Nouguier conceive a 300 m pylon |
| 18 September 1884 | Gustave Eiffel patents the configuration |
| 1886 | The design is chosen from 107 projects |
| 26 January 1887 | First digging |
| 1 July 1887 | The piers begin to rise |
| 7 December 1887 | The major girders join at the first level |
| 1 April 1888 | First floor complete |
| 14 August 1888 | Second floor complete |
| 31 March 1889 | Top and assembly complete |
| 15 May 1889 | The Exposition Universelle opens |
Five months of that went on the foundations and twenty-one on the metal. The brief was to “study the possibility of erecting an iron tower on the Champ-de-Mars with a square base, 125 metres across and 300 metres tall”.
2.5 million rivets, and only a third of them driven on site
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Rivets in total | 2,500,000 |
| Driven on site rather than in the workshop | about one third |
| Men needed per rivet | 4 — one to heat, one to hold, one to shape the head, one to strike |
| Engineers and designers | 50 |
| Workers at the Levallois-Perret works | 150 |
| Workers on site | 150–300 |
| Pressure under each corner block | 3–4 kg per square centimetre |
| Placing accuracy of the girders | 1 millimetre, using sand boxes and hydraulic jacks |
On the Seine side the builders sank watertight metal caissons and injected compressed air so they could work below the water line. The rivets were bolted in the factory first and replaced one by one on site, because a rivet contracts as it cools and pulls the joint tight.
Twenty coats of paint in 136 years
| Years | Colour |
|---|---|
| 1887–88 | Venetian red, applied in the workshop before assembly |
| 1889 | A thick reddish-brown |
| 1892 | Ochre brown |
| 1899 | Five shaded tones, yellow-orange at the base to light yellow at the top |
| 1907–1947 | Yellow-brown |
| 1954–61 | Brownish-red |
| 1968–2019 | “Eiffel Tower Brown” |
| 2019– | The 20th campaign; yellow-brown again for Paris 2024 |
It takes 60 tonnes of paint a time, and the cycle has been roughly every seven years since the 1899 campaign. The 2019 campaign was the first to strip parts of the structure back rather than paint over them.
336 spotlights, four beacons, one 50-mile beam
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Golden lighting inaugurated | 31 December 1985, designed by Pierre Bideau |
| Spotlights | 336, yellow-orange high-pressure sodium |
| Floodlights they replaced | 1,290, in service from 1958 |
| Beacon and sparkle first shown | midnight, 31 December 1999 |
| Beacon | 4 motorised marine floodlights, 6,000W xenon |
| Beacon lamp life | about 1,200 hours |
| Beacon range | 50 miles |
| Beacon movement | 90° rotation, synchronised into a cross-shaped double beam pivoting 360° |
| The sparkle | the first 5 minutes of every hour, from nightfall to closing |
The twenty-year clause
The tower was built with a permit to stand for twenty years and then be taken down. What saved it was not affection but usefulness: Gustave Eiffel invited science onto it, and the radio work that followed made 300 metres of iron in the middle of Paris too valuable to dismantle.
It has been a wireless station, a military listening post and a television transmitter, and it is now the most visited paid monument in the world. The full story is on the history page.
Where to check these figures
Every figure above comes from the monument’s own published pages, listed below. Hours and rates move, so check yours before you travel.
- The Eiffel Tower facts, height and weight
- The birth of the Eiffel Tower
- Painting the Eiffel Tower
- The Eiffel Tower in lights
How the tower came to be built is on the history page, what is on each level on the second floor and summit page, and every way up on Eiffel Tower Paris Tours.