Commanding by day, twinkling by night, the latticework wonder of the Eiffel Tower has mesmerized Francophiles and lovers, artists and dreamers for over 125 years. Based on an original, limited-edition folio by Gustave Eiffel himself, this book presents design drawings, on-site photographs, and historical documents to explore the making of a global architectural icon. 176 pages. ISBN 978-3-8365-8441-8 “The Tower is also present to the entire world... a universal symbol of Paris... from the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn’t made, somehow, in the Tower’s name.” — Roland Barthes When Gustave Eiffel completed his wrought iron tower on Paris’s Champ de Mars for the World’s Fair in 1889, he laid claim to the tallest structure in the world. Though the Chrysler Building would, 41 years later, scrape an even higher sky, the Eiffel Tower lost none of its lofty wonder: originally granted just a 20-year permit, the Tower became a permanent and mesmerizing fixture on the Parisian skyline. Commanding by day, twinkling by night, it has mesmerized Francophiles and lovers, writers, artists, and dreamers from all over the world, welcoming around seven million visitors every single year. Specialist in the history of architecture, construction, and cities in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bertrand Lemoine has curated numerous exhibitions and has widely published on the subjects of architecture and the history of iron and metal structures, including several books on the subject of Gustave Eiffel. Lemoine was director of the journal Architecture Acier Construction and Acier, revue d’architecture. He has been editor in chief of AMC-Le Moniteur Architecture and L’Acier pour Construire. He is the president of the Académie d’architecture.