La Tour Eiffel

Champ de Mars · Paris · 1889

An open iron lattice — four curved legs, three platforms, one antenna. 125 m square at the base, 330 m to the tip of the beacon. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, or take the guided ascent.

Guided camera
Platforms
Inspect a leg
Light
Day6%Night
Scale reference
Camera elevation
0 m
Platform identity
Ground
Tower height
330 m
Iron members
—
Base footprint
125 × 125 m
Member section
0.62 m
Lighting
day
Platform elevations
57 / 115 / 276 m
0
57 m
115 m
276 m
330 m
0 m

Why that curve?

The four legs flare from a 125 m square base to barely 16 m at the summit. The outline follows the funicular of the wind pressure: a gust acts harder and with more leverage the higher it blows, so the tower is widest exactly where the overturning bending moment is greatest — and almost vertical where that moment fades away.

The open lattice keeps solidity near 25 %: air passes through the iron instead of loading a solid face, so every member works as a slender strut or tie rather than resisting a billboard of wind.

7,300 tiron structure
≈ 12 cmsway at the top
2.5 Mrivets
Guided ascent — drag to explore at any time

La Tour Eiffel

assembling 5,000 iron members…