French engineer Gutave Eiffel originally planned to build the tower in Barcelona, for the Universal Exposition of 1888, but the Consistory of the town refused the project. Eiffel submitted his draft to those responsible for the next Universal Exposition, which was to be held in Paris: a permit for the tower to stand was accepted for 20 years. The structure was built as the entrance arch for the 1889 Exposition Universelle of Paris, marking the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Three hundred workers joined together 18,038 pieces of puddled iron (a very pure form of structural iron), using two and a half million rivets, in a structural design by Maurice Koechlin. The Eiffel Tower is now the most visited paid monument in the world.

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Opened in 2007 in the eastern wing of the Palais de Chaillot across from the Eiffel Tower, this architecture and heritage museum one of the largest architectural centres in the world, retraces the history of French architecture from the 12th-century through today. This huge museum impresses by life-size mock-ups of cathedral façades and the facades of some of the most famous monuments in France, and a whole labyrinth of rooms whose ceilings reproduce those of churches and other buildings and full-scale copies of medieval and Renaissance murals and stained-glass windows. The highlight of the modern architecture section is the walk-in replica of an apartment from Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille. Don’t miss it !

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