The mayor, Ann Hidalgo, says it's a "very beautiful idea to combine the Eiffel Tower, a monument designed to be ephemeral for [the 1889 World’s Fair], with the Games, an ephemeral moment which will also have marked Paris and our country. I want the two to remain married."
It's a terrible idea to leave the Olympics logo on the Eiffel Tower! I'm not even a fan of the Eiffel Tower. I think it should have been taken down, as originally planned, after the 1889 World's Fair. It doesn't harmonize with the rest of the city. But people have fixated on the thing, so there it is, with its weird power. Don't change it now.
We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection ... of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower.... To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years ... we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal.
Eiffel responded: "My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected by man. Will it not also be grandiose in its way? And why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris?"
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81 comments:
The Mayor needs to step off.
I remember when the first broke out near the tower on the same night that a terrorist in a truck killed dozens in Nice, and thought oh wow - Eiffel Tower
It would have come down but for the newly invented device called the radio which relied on the tower for broadcasting.
Compared to everything else associated with the Paris olympics, just how could this be any more abominable. How can you ridicule a farce? How can you condemn something that has no dignity as undignified?
Let them keep it up there. It serves as a warning.
I admit to getting a vaguely fascistic, authoritarian vibe from the tower, which is much taller than any nearby structure. This is especially the case when the rotating light at the top of it is turned on at night. It reminds me of a search light on a guard tower.
No worse than that dreary Telecom Tower in London
May as well leave it up- it will make is easier in a few years when the rings are changed to a crescent Moon with star.
Considering the towering, hideous architectural nightmares erected (damn near everywhere) since, the Eiffel Tower bothers me not at all. Not that I'd be all wee-weed up about it, but I would find leaving the Olympic rings to be a WTF addition.
I disagree. The pictures don't do it justice to the effect of being there, seeing it radiating out across the concentric circles of the layout of Paris. And it helps to be in love when you see it. Years later, it seems like a beacon - "Calling all lovers, calling all lovers...come back"
Baron Haussmann tore down a lot of Paris. In so doing, he allowed viewers a clear view of some magnificent medieval churches. I guess they were the prestige buildings in the middle ages. Some of them are extravagantly beautiful. Not so much the Eiffel Tower, but it endures. Every generation wants to erect a lasting monument and every succeeding generation wants to believe that their antecedents created lasting monuments.....I'm okay with the Eifffel Tower. It does, however, offer a great deal of advertising space who has not been previously used. The Olympic Rings is a step in the right direction and is in keeping with the Eiffel Tower's original intent as promotional vehicle. Perhaps, Perrier can arrange to blow giant soap bubbles off the top of the Tower to advertise their product.
Not the first time.
Cole Porter in Fifty Million Frenchmen:
Before you stands the Eiffel Tower,
A monument adored.
Then what does that sign mean -- Citroën?
Citroën is French for Ford.
Aux armes, Citroën, Citroën is French for Ford.
Do you realize this famous tower
Will be all lit up in another hour
With a light of a million candlepower?
I'll buy it.
" The pictures don't do it justice to the effect of being there...."
I've been there. It's hard to miss. What's the "justice"? Seeing how big it is in contrast to other things? That's the problem.
I despise the aesthetics of the elite.
I would bet that a far more impactful/practical debate is over control of rights, clearances, and payments.
The following is from "The Eiffel Tower Welcome on the Official Website"
https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower
The Eiffel Tower image rights
DAYLIGHT VIEWS OF THE TOWER
Free user
The image of the Eiffel Tower by day falls within the public domain: its use is rights-free, and may therefore be reproduced without prior authorisation by the SETE, the managing company of the image of the Eiffel Tower on behalf of the Mairie de Paris.
THE TOWER ILLUMINATED
Controlled use
The various illuminations of the Eiffel Tower (golden illumination, twinkling, beacon and events lighting) are protected.
The use of the image of the Eiffel Tower at night is therefore subject to prior authorisation by the SETE. This use is subject to payment of rights, the amount of which is determined by the intended use, the media plan, etc.
Views of the Eiffel Tower taken by private individuals for private use do not require prior agreement. However, professionals must contact our teams, who will inform them of the conditions of use governing images.
I went out for a stroll one evening and came upon the bridge over the Seine that has the Eiffel Tower as its immediate background. Apparently Parisians are found of the tower because the bridge was crowded with people getting their wedding photographs done and absolutely stunningly beautiful women getting their pictures taken for their modeling portfolio, all with the tower lit up for the night in the background. I grabbed a snapshot with my phone of the tower and it came out great.
The Montparnasse Tower should come down. The Eiffel Tower may stay. I have decreed.
I like the Eiffel Tower - alot. It's got a steampunk elegance that appeals to me. I also like the idea of a solitary building in a flat city that towers over everything else. It gives a reference point to where you are and helps to navigate. I even like the genuinely ugly TV tower in Berlin for this reason.
Added... Norm MacDonald on the corrupting power of money, which I believe may be present. The first one was what came foremost in mind.
Re: killing the queen of England
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxnK08UN6mk
money changes a man...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL12kWYeIMI
Keep the Tower, kill the Olympics.
The big ferris wheels, like the London Eye, are the new Eiffel Tower. They are great tourist attractions to get a view of the city, but otherwise they are an eyesore to what the city is and the rest of the architecture. Still, I enjoyed the views from the London Eye and Eiffel Tower when I toured the cities.
As for the Olympic rings, come 2028, they wouldn't even make sense to be associated with Paris. The Olympics are a shared world event, and only Paris for a period of time. They certainly don't define Paris, and to the extent they do, not in a good way. Setting aside the opening ceremonies, you had a large number of people get sick from swimming in Seine. The Americans won more medals and more gold medals than France. Enjoy the momentary, but embrace your longer history and culture. Except this is modern day EU and France, and they seem hell bent to erase their own culture.
The Eiffel Tower acquired an identity of its own post-conception. The Olympic rings or any other advertisement is not only a disfigurement but an abortion of its true self.
Advertisements hoisted on the tower, including the rings, should be cosmetic changes that can be easily removed to restore its native gender.
I flew tiny paper airplanes off the Eiffel Tower for a day in 1960, waiting for the airplane home. So it's good for that.
Keep the rings, take down the tower.
Solved.
From the idiom section of the Free Dictionary: "The phrase 'do it justice' means to represent someone or something wholly or accurately."
Its "bigness" doesn't wholly or accurately represent its perceived beauty in many people. I see and feel it. You don't. And I'm fine with that.
I agree with Olivier Berthelot-Eiffel. Next thing you know Coca-Cola will buy the rights to the Tower and it'll be renamed the Eiffel Everything Goes Better with Coke Tower. And that logo will be lighting up the Champs de Mars. Why do we insist on (a) creating awful architecture today and (b) destroying or marring the great architecture left to us from previous times.
Leave the Tower, take the cannoli.
No need to kill what is already committing suicide.
Gracie Allen said that it's purpose is to hold up the blinking red light so airplanes don't run into it.
The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower is nice, if all you want to see is the tops of trees. Otherwise, it struck me as just a big iron structure. Paris has so much more to offer.
“That’s gonna be non pour moi, chien.”—Olivier Berthelot-Eiffel
Agreed. Complete blight on the cityscape.
A con man sold the tower to scrap metal dealer.Twice. Have to admire that guy..
why not repurpose ringset to go around as weathervane/power generator
Good point.
The Tower was undergoing some renovation when we were in Paris in '17, so we just looked up at it. If I make it to Paris again I might go up it, but as others have noted there's so much else to do there.
The city that erected La Défense is not in a position to grumble about ugly architecture.
absolutely stunningly beautiful women getting their pictures taken for their modeling portfolio
Few of them actually French nationals, I'll bet. Americans and Ukrainians and Russians, more likely.
Hear hear. Also Mitterand's Folly, that sad, wan, soulless modern echo of the Arc de Triomphe at La Défense.
That would at least have some Bentham utilitarian justification. If the West is going to go goblinesque uggo, Europeans might as well get some badly needed energy from it.
Les assholes will be paying for those Olympics forever. One might think they would want to avoid the symbol of the embarrassment. Perhaps the Mayor believes keeping them up is a way to get their money’s worth? Quel dommage
Seeing the view from the top of Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre is much better, and good exercise too.
Ann Hidalgo has succeeded in allowing graffiti and homelessness throughout the city. It is not a surprise she would like to see this destroyed too. It's bad enough they had to surround most of the park with glass and security portals due to the crime and threat of terror attacks.
Meh, it is better looking than the Space Needle or CN Tower, so I am okay with it.
Somebody (was it Maupassant?) loved to dine at the Eiffel Tower restaurant because he thought it was the only place in the city where the view of Paris wasn't spoiled by seeing the Eiffel Tower, which he hated.
The mayor, Ann Hidalgo, says it's a "very beautiful idea to combine the Eiffel Tower, a monument designed to be ephemeral for [the 1889 World’s Fair], with the Games, an ephemeral moment which will also have marked Paris and our country. I want the two to remain married."
If ephemerality appeals to her, why try to make it permanent? The Olympics have been held in Paris twice before Nobody alive now has first-hand memories of the 1900 or 1924 Olympics, and few people even remember that they were held in Paris. The 2024 Olympics will likewise fade in people's memories. They aren't what they used to be, and people are already forgetting them. Why not let them?
France is still a big country for tourists, but somehow Paris isn't as interesting and attractive as it used to be. Same thing for New York City, though. There are other big and lively cities in the world.
Speaking of the Olympics, whatever happened to the open water swimmer who got so sick from swimming in the Seine?
Paris isn't as interesting and attractive as it used to be.
I have seen all the pleasant parts of it, and all of the museums, monuments, and other attractions that appealed to me, and more fancy restaurant meals than I would need in two lifetimes. I won't be needing to see Paris any more, except perhaps the airport and train stations on my way out to the countryside.
Next time I go I will be visiting the Pays-Basque, Lourdes, and Bordeaux, probably by way of Bilbao rather than Paris.
You mean the one who fell from the Tower and was in Seine? She went right around the bend.
Paris isn't as interesting and attractive as it used to be.
I've been to Paris twice, first in '76 as a 19 year-old hitchhiking aorund Europe. The second time about 10 years ago for a city break. The first time was monumental, the second time nice. I'm now done with Paris - so many other places I'd rather see/visit. Right now I'm in Lyon for the first time and have greatly enjoyed the city. Wouldn't mind returning with some time spent in the countryside drinking Côtes du Rhône (I'm presently enjoying the pleasant buzz of the bottle I just finished).
Bill Overstreet followed a Bf 109 under the Eiffel Tower in 1944 and shot it down. Nothing in the Olympics compares with that.
Oh why not? As my late brother said (after his Wanderjahre in Europe doing his college years in the mid 1960s) "The only thing wrong with Paris is that it's full of Parisians".
I'd done quite a bit of business travel to Europe in the mid and late 1970s and on through the 80s. My wife's first trip to Europe would be with me in the fall of 1983 to take European delivery of a Saab. I like London, and don't much like Paris, but she insisted she wanted to see Paris. Okay--we'll fly from LA to London to start our trip, get the Saab in Sweden, drive around Europe for a couple of weeks, wind up in Paris for several days. Then fly to London and home from there.
One cold November night we were walking down the Champs Elysees. I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take us to the Eiffel Tower. The driver said he didn't know where it was. As my brother said, the only thing wrong with Paris. . .
I believe that the one I’m thinking of is Claire Michel, a Belgian triathlete who had to be hospitalized. There may have been others hospitalized. When was she released? Has she been able to return to competition? Others were very sick IIRC.
The driver said he didn't know where it was.
That would be where I'd try a little of what I remember from high school French, and some extra stuff learned from a Belgian exchange student that was not taught in class.
Vas te faire enculer, bien sûr que tu trouveras beaucoup d'autres passagers ce soir, espèce de con!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_txdqnVP3-c
Considering that these past Olympics were not memorable in the least, why attach the rings to the Tower? Men disguised as women beating up women; a fake breakdancer, as if breakdancing belongs in the Olympics; and that ghastly Woke opening. Gag me.
Barcelona still has a set of giant Olympic rings on its waterfront. They detract from what is a beautiful setting
Not quite so thrilling, but still pretty damn ballsy.
--- But I'd have sided with the "Artists against the Eiffel Tower,"
Ohh! The majority of your readers are astounded at this statement. : )
I say sell the brand like MFL Stadiums do. Perhaps TRUMP will buy it.
Oops… NFL.
In 30 years this problem will be solved when the Eiffel Tower is converted into a mosque.
What's worse than traveling to the Eiffel Tower?
Finding the place is crawling with men in shorts when you finally get there.
I believe the French word for it is gauche.
There was that festival in front of le tour effel avec that really old french rock star and the crazy horse dancers. Tres grand Français…
They say:
"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower.
Its head: in the heavens.
Let us make ourselves a name,
that we not be scattered over the face of all the earth.
YHWH descends to see the city and the tower
that the sons of man have built.
YHWH says:
"Yes! A single people, a single lip for all:
that is what they begin to do! . . .
Come! Let us descend! Let us confound their lips,
man will no longer understand the lip of his neighbor."
I think of it as a monument to the guy who helped construct the Statue of Liberty.
YouTube: The Rivers of Civilization or, In the far-right's opinion.
As a tourist I enjoyed the walking around it; looking down at the city from the highest observation deck accessible to the public in the European Union. and using it as a reference point when I couldn't find my hotel.
Leave it alone.
There is no accounting for taste ... including my own.
The great great great grandson? At some point, I think you lose your rights to the tower.
In the spirit of the times: Tear It Down
Craig Howard said...
The Montparnasse Tower should come down. The Eiffel Tower may stay. I have decreed.
The Montparnasse is hideous. It looks like a gasometer extruded up 600 feet. On the other hand, its observation deck is one of the best places in the city to view La Tour Eiffel. ** Gallic Shrug **
Indeed.
Yes!
every loneliness is a pinnacle
I didn't know the details, only that you couldn't pay me enough francs to stick a toe in that sewer.
The Seine valley above Paris is quite beautiful. Sights as French as French can be, if you like that sort of thing.
You go to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower. You go to Akeley MN and see the Paul Bunyan statue. It's all the same.
When I had billions of Hilton Honors points I would go to Paris on Air France Business Class and stay at the old Paris Hilton at the foot of the tower. Your room always had a tower view and every hour that was dark they had a noisy electric fireworklike show. OK.
I can't believe French artists saw an erection they didn't like.
Take down the Eiffel Tower, Anne? Really? Then I guess we should follow suit with the tower in Seattle, also the one in Toronto? I'm sure there are others that offend your sense of style. The tower IS Paris. Its height is like a big exclamation point (in a good way). Given the way things are going in general in Paris, they need to keep all of the good vibes that they can. I guess if someone does take it down, the authorities will need to talk to you as at least an instigator.
Without the tower remaining as a city icon after the Fair, I doubt Paris would have continued to corral [most of] their skyscrapers to La Défense. It would be more likely to look like any other big city downtown by now.
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