Have you ever been to Paris? Let’s discover five awesome Eiffel Tower facts for kids.
The Eiffel Tower was fully assembled on the 31st March 1889 after being designed by Gustav Eiffel, two engineers, and an architect. The Eiffel Tower won a contest to be created that was organised by the French government.
The French government wanted a flagship structure to display during the World’s fair. The World’s fair was an event to showcase new inventions and the achievements of nations. The French government wanted the Eiffel Tower builtto celebrate it being 100 years since the French Revolution. The Eiffel Tower was only meant to be there for 20 years.
Not everyone liked the design of the Eiffel Tower and some Parisians, especially artists were upset that Gustav Eiffel’s design had won the contest. There were a lot of protests from artists who thought the design was too industrial and even called it names.
One critic called it a “truly tragic street lamp”. One man called Guy de Maupassant was a vocal critic of the Eiffel Tower and he had a unique way of avoiding the tower. He would eat lunch in the restaurants at the base of the Eiffel Tower every day because it was the only place in Paris where he could not see the tower on the horizon.
In preparation for the World’s Fair the Eiffel Tower was painted a yellow colour but now it is painted brown, which is closer to the natural colour of the metal that it is made from. The painting of the Eiffel Tower is an interesting job because of how our eyes see colour. The Eiffel Tower is painted with brown paint but not all the same colour.
Painters use 5 different tones of brown to paint the Eiffel Tower because the height of the tower makes colour look different to our eyes. In order for the colour to look the same all the way up they have to use different tones of brown.
The Eiffel Tower is an impressive work of engineering as it is so tall. The Eiffel Tower stood at 1024 feet tall when it was first built. Since then antennas have been added to it making it even taller. Today the Eiffel Tower is 1083 feet tall, that is as tall as 180 giraffes, that’s super tall.
Even though it is very tall, the Eiffel Tower only took 2 years and 2 months to build. It took 300 workers to build it and the structure is joined together with 2 and a half million rivets. That is a lot of work!
We hope you enjoyed learning more things about the Eiffel Tower as much as we loved teaching you about them. Now that you know how majestic this landmark is, you can move on to learn about other famous places and statues like: Statue of Liberty and The Colosseum.
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