The Eiffel Tower is the majestic symbol of France
The symbol of France, towering over Paris and guarding it for 131 years, has never tired of listening to the tales of the waters of the Seine, its eternal mirror.
It is the Eiffel Tower, that iron tower firmly established in the history of the French as a cultural and technical landmark that narrates the greatness of France in the industrial era, and testifies to the French Genius in architecture, as with its design that is different from the architectural and artistic style at that time, it paved the way for World modernity in art and architecture. But today it suffers from isolation, like other famous French monuments.
The towering symbol of France today celebrates its memory, and it is in a state of being, visitors have shaken off from it, lovers of Architecture have left it, and addicts of the enchanting view of Paris.
The Eiffel Tower is an orphan, but its place and status do not change, and whoever cannot rise it in the time of Corona, here he offers himself to the willing and the willing.
Virtual tours in the time of prohibition
Many photos and videos taken in the past few days document the absence of the Eiffel Tower and Paris from the usual human movement during different times of the same day. The impact of these scenes was heavy and cruel, especially for the lovers of the city of Lights, who are not used to seeing it sad and silent as now, where the Eiffel tower overlooks it alone, no spirits ascend it, and no stories are told about it.
Some virtual applications and programs are trying to offer alternative initiatives that compensate visitors for the closure of all tourist and cultural attractions in France due to the Compulsory Health ban. One of the most important of these Google Arts and Culture applications has been available since last March to explore the treasures of human civilizations in several museums around the world, but in the special section titled Douce France, which was announced a few days ago, a set of adventures and explorations in France has been added, such as cruising the skies of the capital Paris and seeing it from unusual angles. To focus on visiting a landmark, such as the Eiffel Tower, we can only type its name in the application's search engine to find ourselves in its presence by default, swimming over it, and examining its corners.
This experience is not the first of its kind, on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the tower, TV5 channel has created a 360-degree virtual tour that reveals in 3 minutes all the sides of the tower as if you were already there. It is a journey to discover unparalleled views of the capital Paris that begins with sunrise over the Champs-de-Mars park, in which the camera takes on the task of the human eye to preview the dazzling views of the tower and its surroundings in a high-definition experience.
We enter the glass elevators, and fly with them to the top, bottom, top, right and left, we can control our short tour in all directions, and through the zoom feature you can see Notre Dame, Trocadero Square, Place de la Concorde and other monuments in Paris.
It is worth noting that the official website of the Eiffel Tower includes similar tours that enable us to visit and explore it.
The Eiffel Tower is tackling Corona
Using modern lighting technologies, the Eiffel Tower and other towers around the world such as the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Macau Tower in China and the Willis Tower in the USA, took the initiative to greet all those who are facing the coronavirus on the frontlines, from doctors, nurses, firefighters, cleaners, volunteers, security men, policemen and many others.
The Eiffel Tower starts daily at eight in the evening with flashing and lighting for 10 minutes with phrases of thanks in French and English. And starting from half past eight to eleven at night every day, the tower reminds citizens of the set of quarantine instructions that enable them to fight the coronavirus. Also in French and English, phrases such as: "wash your hands regularly","take care of yourself and stay at home"alternate with it.
A technical revolution and amazing accuracy in record time
The story began when the French government launched a competition in the newspapers to design an edifice or building representing France at the International Exhibition in Paris on May 15/ November 6, 1889 to celebrate the first centenary of the French Revolution.
The aim of the competition was to study the possibility of erecting an iron tower with a square base 125 m Wide, 300 m high on the north-west of the Champ de Mars park near the Seine. The great engineers and architects of France submitted to it the equivalent of 107 proposals, and it was won by the genius engineer Gustave Eiffel (1832 - 1923), who gave his nickname to the tower in honor of his creativity.
The construction of the project took two years, two months and 5 days. The first works on the construction process began on January 28, 1887 and were completed on March 31, 1889, and it was officially launched on May 6 of the same year to be at that time the highest landmark in the world with a height of 324 meters.
The final shape of the tower was completed in such a way that the priorities of the streamlined technical form are equal to the technologies of the support and safety conditions. All the elements used in the construction were prepared at the Eiffel plant located in Levallois-Perret on the outskirts of Paris. Considering the means available at that time, the construction of the tower took place in a record time, and the assembly of its parts was considered surprisingly accurate and almost imaginary.
According to the official website of the tower, 7,300 tons of iron, 60 tons of paint and 18,038 pieces of iron were used in the construction process, while 50 engineers and designers worked on it under the supervision of Eiffel, and between 150-300 workers were present on the site.
In the past 131 years, the tower has been continuously modernized in line with new technologies and ongoing challenges. The elevators may be the most updated and periodically developed part of the tower over the past decades, according to an architectural methodology that prevents the cancellation of its historical elevators, which since their construction in the late nineteenth century posed a challenge to the mechanical systems followed at that time.
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The tower consists of three layers, which have undergone several modifications, including facades, supports and internal cladding. Elevators and stairs connect them, but stairs are allowed only for the first floor, which rises by 57.91 m from the ground, while access to the second floor, which rises by 114.6 m, and to the third, which is about 114.6 m high, is exclusively through elevators.
In 2017, the city of Paris launched an international invitation for professionals in urban planning, architecture and Landscape Design, in order to create development projects that improve visitors ' experiences in exploring the cultural and heritage richness of the site with ease and comfort.
The Eiffel Tower was registered as a historical monument on June 24, 1964, and was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1991. It was imitated in updated versions by many countries in memory of him and celebrating the engineering genius that made him, Las Vegas includes the tallest replica of the tower, and in Japan Tokyo erected a tower resembling it in 1958 with a height of 333 M and painted in white and red. Two replicas of it were also built in China, along with numerous copies in Europe such as those in Prague with a height of 60 M, and in Romania with a height of 50 m.
The tower annually receives 7 million visitors, 75 percent of whom are foreigners, and has so far received 300 million visitors from celebrities and tourists who came to see it as a masterpiece and to explore the vivid experiences of culture that reflect good taste, such as restaurants that offer the most famous recipes and dishes of French and international cuisine, which are also constantly renewed.
The tower threatens French taste!
What we see today from the admiration of the French and their strong attachment to the Eiffel Tower and their belonging to it culturally and artistically, as it has become over time an inseparable part of the Parisian entity, was not the same in the late nineteenth century with the beginnings of the project. Many cultural and artistic elites found in the project of erecting a high-rise iron tower a serious threat to the general artistic format prevailing in the capital of light, and a direct industrial invasion paving the way for a society based on technology and losing its intimate characteristics.
With the news published in the newspapers announcing the start of the construction of the tower and providing the recipient with information about it, a group of artists wrote a protest published in the newspaper Le Temps on February 14, 1887 against the Eiffel Tower, from which we recall: "we come, writers, painters, sculptors and architects who are passionate about the beauty of Paris so far, to protest with all our might, with all our indignation, in the name of unrecognized French taste, in the name of Art, against this monument that will stand in the heart of our capital, useless and brutal Eiffel Tower (...) It is enough to realize what is happening to imagine for a moment a ridiculous tower, dominating Paris, as well as a huge black factory chimney, crushing with a barbaric mass our monuments".
Gustave Eiffel responded with the following: "I think, for my part, the tower will have its own beauty. Because we are engineers, does this mean that beauty does not matter to us in our facilities and that at the same time that we make it strong and durable, we do not strive to be stylish Don't the conditions of real power always correspond to the secret conditions of harmony (...) In the huge attraction there is an attraction, its own charm, to which ordinary theories of art hardly apply".
It is a strange paradox that reflects human logic in rejecting everything that is new, rejecting the Unknown on the pretext that it will change or cancel what came before. In fact, the tower has given Paris a special character that combines originality and modernity, as if it complemented its public landscape and increased its attractiveness.
The Paris Tower is not the only Eiffel achievement
Gustave Eiffel graduated from the Central School of Arts and industries in 1855. He spent several years in the south-west of France, during which he supervised the work of the railway bridge in the city of Bordeaux. After that he founded his own company "builder", in which he worked as a contractor specializing in metal structures. In the world of engineering, Eiffel is considered a real genius who gives his created works a lot of emotions along with the high technology that is undoubtedly required. Although his international fame was gained from the construction and design of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, his professional career is replete with important engineering achievements, including: the nice Dome Observatory, the metal and structural structure of the statue of Liberty currently located in New York, and many of his favorite railway bridges, such as the Twin Bridges in Porto - Portugal and the garabit bridge in Cantal - France.
The "Panama Canal" project is one of the largest products of Eiffel's genius, but it ended in a disaster that led to its cessation of work. Despite his diligence in the construction of canal locks completed before him by Ferdinand de Lesseps, he was accused of fraud and punished with two years in prison and a fine of 2000 francs.
Affected by this incident, which stabbed him in his honor and dignity, Eiffel retired from work and closed his career record. He was never dissuaded by the decision of the court, which later acquitted him and dropped his prosecution for his decision to retire.
During his retirement, Gustave Eiffel devoted his life to scientific research, returning to the basics of engineering science, adding to it what he learned in his practical experiments. He has spent the last thirty years of his life researching and presenting studies on the Parisian tower, including experiments with its resistance to air and various weather conditions.
Eiffel died on December 27, 1923 at the age of 91, spent at the service of human civilization and not only France.
A symbol of modernity in the arts
The presence of artistic voices opposed to the construction of the tower did not prevent others from being inspired to be a topic addressed by the creators at the level of form and content in their products, starting from the stage of its formation, through the early twentieth century, where it became a symbol of modernity and the avant-garde in the arts, up to the present and the immortal cultural heritage it embodies for us.
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