City Tour and Eiffel Tower Summit with Reserved Access

Overview

A ninety-minute open-top coach circuit of central Paris followed by reserved lift access to the summit of the Eiffel Tower, meeting near the monument and finishing there.

What to expect

• Meet at the stated point close to the Tower.
• The coach circuit past the Champs-Élysées, the Concorde, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre and Notre-Dame.
• Commentary through an app on your own phone.
• Return to the Tower and the security screening.
• The lift to the second floor, then a change of car for the summit.
• Time at the top, and the tour ends there.

The tower is never quite the same height twice

Iron expands when it warms. On a hot day the Eiffel Tower stands measurably taller than in midwinter — a difference of some fifteen centimetres between the extremes.

It also leans. The sun heats one face at a time, that side expands more than the shaded one, and the top drifts a few centimetres away from the sun. Over the course of a day the summit traces a slow arc, moving as the light moves round it.

Wind adds its own small sway, well within what the structure was designed to absorb. Eiffel calculated for far worse than Paris has ever delivered.

The colour is three colours

Look carefully from the ground and the tower appears one even shade. It is not. Since 1968 it has been painted in three tones of the same brown — darkest at the bottom, lightest at the top.

That is a trick of perspective. Against a bright sky the upper sections would otherwise look darker and heavier than the lower ones; graduating the paint cancels the effect, so the whole thing reads as a single colour from the Champ de Mars.

It has not always been brown. The tower left the workshop a reddish colour in 1889 and has since worn ochre, yellow and chestnut before settling on the brown you see now.

Sixty tonnes of paint, applied by hand

The repainting happens roughly every seven years and takes around sixty tonnes of paint. It is done by hand, with brushes, by painters working on ropes and platforms across the whole structure.

There is no shortcut: spraying would coat the ironwork unevenly and waste paint into the air over central Paris, so it is brushed on, piece by piece, exactly as it was in the nineteenth century.

Practicalities

The summit can close at short notice in strong wind, and that decision is made on the day. It is also markedly colder up there than at the base — bring more than the forecast suggests.

Note that this tour finishes at the monument rather than returning to the meeting point, so plan how you are getting onward. Bring earphones; none are supplied.