GoKawiilA Dizzying Spiral Staircase With a Single Guardrail Once Led to the Top of the Eiffel Tower. Now, You Can Buy 14 of the Original Steps The 1,062 steps connecting the tower’s second and third levels were installed in 1889. Fragments from the 137-year-old staircase can be found at several French museums Ellen Wexler - Assistant Editor, Humanities Get our newsletter! Get our newsletter!
When Gustave Eiffel, the famous French engineer, designed the Eiffel Tower in the late 19th century, he added a 1,076-square-foot private office just above the top floor. It featured a couch, a table, three desks, a kitchen and a bathroom. Eiffel climbed a narrow spiral staircase to reach the space, where he enjoyed unparalleled views of the city as he worked.
Now, a section of the original staircase is heading to auction. The French auction house Artcurial will sell the fragment on May 21, and officials expect it to fetch between $141,000 and $176,000.
“Imagine yourself in 1889 on this staircase, perched between [371 and 906 feet] high, with no safety barriers, but with a 360-degree view of Paris,” Sabrina Dolla, an associate director at Artcurial, tells CNN’s Lianne Kolirin.
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Paris World’s Fair, held on the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. At first, the design was controversial, with one critic condemning it as a “truly tragic street lamp.” Others worried about a series of unlikely outcomes, including the possibility that electricity from the tower might electrocute the fish in the Seine River.
At 1,024 feet, the tower was then the tallest structure in the world—a record it would retain until the Chrysler Building overtook it in 1929. Eiffel’s contract dictated that the structure would stay up for only 20 years. When the end of that period drew near, the engineer pushed to extend it, arguing that the tower could be used for scientific experiments.
“It gradually became more and more part of the landscape, and it became very hard to imagine Paris without the Eiffel Tower,” Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, Eiffel’s great-great-great-grandson, told Architectural Digest’s Morgan Goldberg in 2024. “It’s become the symbol of Paris, and of France as well.”
Quick facts: The Eiffel Tower at the Olympics During the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, athletes received gold, silver and bronze medals that included pieces of scrap iron from the Eiffel Tower.
The fragments, once part of the tower’s original iron, were removed during later renovations.
The structure features three main floors. The first floor and second floor include several popular dining spots. On the top floor, visitors can enjoy sweeping views of Paris. They can also see a reconstruction of Eiffel’s office, featuring wax models of the engineer; his eldest daughter, Claire; and the American inventor Thomas Edison, who once presented Eiffel with a gramophone.
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