Eiffel Tower Map: Entrances, Piers and Where the Tours Meet

Finding the Eiffel Tower is not the problem. Understanding it is: two entrances, four piers, two kiosk colours and a guided departure that almost certainly does not meet where you think. Here is the layout, and the meeting point of every one of the guided tours of the Eiffel Tower listed here.

Two entrances, and which one to use

There are exactly two ways onto the site: entry 1 on the south side and entry 2 on the east. Each has separate queues for visitors who already hold a ticket and visitors who do not, so the first thing to do at either is find the right line.

Coming from the RER at Champ de Mars – Tour Eiffel, or on foot up the park, you arrive at the south side. Coming across the Pont d’Iéna from Trocadéro, you arrive at the east. Neither is better; they are simply where you already are.

The four piers, and which one your ticket sends you to

The tower stands on four piers set out in a square 410 feet on a side, and they are not interchangeable. Some carry lifts, one carries the stairs, and the security check before you enter one is the second of the two you will clear.

The colour is the whole system. Green kiosk for the lift, blue kiosks for the stairs. Get that right on the esplanade and you will not join a queue that was never yours.

The gardens and the esplanade underneath are free to walk into once you are through the first check — there is no free entry to the Eiffel Tower itself, but the ground beneath it costs nothing at all.

Where the guided tours actually meet

Several of these listings open with the instruction in capitals: please do not go to the Eiffel Tower. They meet on a street corner nearby, walk you in as a group, and a traveller standing hopefully under the piers is a traveller who has missed the tour.

Meeting points scattered all around the tower rather than at it, and one of them is a cruise terminal in Le Havre, 200 kilometres away. Read the meeting point on your own confirmation before you set out, and give yourself fifteen minutes more than you think.

Getting here

The official address is 5 avenue Anatole France, 75007 Paris, on the Champ de Mars. If it is your first visit, come out at Trocadéro even though it is the longest walk: you emerge facing the whole tower across the river, which is the view every photograph you have seen was taken from.

Seven Sundays without Bir-Hakeim. Line 6 is being modernised, and the section between Charles de Gaulle – Étoile and La Motte-Picquet – Grenelle is suspended on 6 and 20 September, 4, 11 and 18 October, and 8 and 22 November 2026. That closes the nearest metro station to the tower. A replacement bus runs between the two ends, Trocadéro and École Militaire are unaffected, and buses 30, 42 and 82 stop nearby. The dates are on the events page too.

Where to stand for the photograph

The Trocadéro esplanade gives you the whole tower head-on from slightly above, across the river. It is the classic, it is free, and the monument names it itself as one of the two best places to watch the lights come on.

The Champ de Mars is the other, and it is a different picture entirely: you are underneath, looking up the length of the ironwork with the park in front. Both work at any hour, and both are at their best in the five minutes at the top of the hour after dark.

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.

• Access map
• Planning a smooth visit
• Bir-Hakeim station closed on selected Sundays
• The Eiffel Tower in lights