Gustave Eiffel first offered his tower to Barcelona … but the Spanish city rejected it. Fifty engineers and designers produced 5,300 drawings and over 100 workers built more than 18,000 different parts of the tower in a workshop. Another 132 workers assembled them on site.
Work on the foundations began on 26 January 1887 and took 5 months - with the workers using only spades! The rubble was taken away by carts drawn by horses and steam locamotives. The monument was inaugurated on 31 March 1889 and on that day Gustave Eiffel climbed the 1710 steps of the Tower to plant the French flag at its peak.
Since its beginnings, the Tower has been repainted every 7 years with the 19th re-painting getting underway in March 2009 and is expected to take 18 months to complete ... all the time, the Tower will remain open to visitors.
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