Foreign Fridays Fact: France

Submitted by Foreign Students on Fri 30/03/12

As part of Foreign Fridays, we explore a different country each week through its most unusual, amusing and odd facts. If you want your country to appear, then simply get in contact with us either in the comments below or through Facebook or Twitter.

This week it is the turn of the France:

There are 600 steps up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower.
Then you have to get a lift the rest of the way to the top.

It is the Eiffel Tower's birthday tomorrow. It will be 113-years-old. Ever since 1889, it has been one of the most recognisable landmarks in the world. Its unique structure and look were designed and built by Gustave Eiffel and unsurprisingly the tower is still the top tourist attraction in France today.

The tower stands at a massive 324 metres tall and was the tallest man-made structure in the world for a whopping 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York came along in 1930. Although it is much-loved now, when it was first proposed, the Eiffel Tower met a lot of criticism. A group of artists and writers gathered together purely to protest against the Tower, even writing:

"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection...of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower."

Similarly, after the design was altered during the construction, French newspapers decided the man in charge must of been mad. Headlines such as "Eiffel Suicide!" and "Gustave Eiffel has gone mad: he has been confined in an Asylum" were a common sight.

Fortunately, Gustave Eiffel was not mad, and his ambition to build the tallest, most iconic structure in the world was a huge success.

You can see all the previous Foreign Friday blog posts here and the main Foreign Fridays page here.