Download The Eiffel Tower: The History of Paris' Most Famous Landmark AudioBook Free
"Being the most dazzling manifestation of the fine art of metal structures where our engineers have shown in Europe, it is one of the very most striking in our modern countrywide genius." - Gustave Eiffel It's the home of kings, emperors, and aristocrats, and the home of the Champs-Élyséha sido, the Bastille, the Louvre and the salons that fueled the Enlightenment. For foreigners like Benjamin Franklin, it was the most beautiful city on the globe, and millions of people still visit those same sites each year. Known as the "City of Light," Paris seamlessly blends its rich recent with all the current trappings of a modern city, and the city's features and characteristics are overlooked today, but Paris had not been always doing this. In fact, it took nearly half a hundred years of redesigning the location during the 19th hundred years to change it into the location it is today. Though it may be hard to believe today, the Eiffel Tower was primarily found with derision by many Frenchmen, a few of whom compared it to the Tower of Babel and complained that the "worthless and monstrous" framework would obscure treasures such as Notre Dame. In response to such criticisms, Eiffel himself pointed out, "Can one feel that because were engineers, beauty will not preoccupy us or that we do not make an effort to build beautiful, as well as sturdy and long lasting structures? Aren't the original functions of power always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? Besides, there can be an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of fine art do not apply." It's safe to state that Eiffel was correct. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people refute those original notions by operating to the most notable and which makes it the most visited paid monument in the entire world. Indeed, the Eiffel Tower has welcomed over 250 million tourists in less than 130 years. Eiffel got the good bundle of money to be vindicated in his life time, and since he once joked, "I ought to be jealous of the tower. She actually is more famous than I am."
