Did the US give France the Eiffel Tower?

Answer and Explanation: The Eiffel Tower was not a gift from France to America, rather it was built for the 1889 World's Fair held in Paris, France. It was the centerpiece of the exposition and very popular with visitors then and now. What was a gift from France to America, on the other hand, was the Statue of Liberty.



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Financing of the Eiffel Tower: the Franco-Egyptian Bank enters the scene. In 1888, the cost of building the Eiffel Tower was estimated at 6.5 million francs, with public authorities only being able to cover 1.5 million francs of this cost. Eiffel therefore approached banks to raise the additional 5 million francs.

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The Eiffel Tower was built to be one the main attractions at the Paris World's Fair in 1889. That year, the World's Fair covered the entire Champ de Mars in Paris and its focus was the vast constructions in iron and steel that were the great industrial advancement of that time.

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High-minded critics in France attacked the Eiffel Tower as it was being built, lobbing the most excruciating insult they could come up with. It was, they sputtered, positively awful, something even those uncouth Americans wouldn't embrace. Sacre bleu, mon dieu, and zut alors!

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His name probably doesn't speak to you, and yet Victor Lustig was one of the greatest crooks of his time. His biggest scam? Having successfully sold the Eiffel Tower to a scrap dealer. At what price ?

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At first a lot of them hated it because it was so different from all other Parisian architecture: raw iron where everything else was stone. But since then it has become so iconic that it's hard to imagine Paris without it, and everybody is used to it.

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But though Eiffel's tower planned to set records, it wasn't without controversy. The building was radically industrial, and that chafed against the sensibilities of more refined Parisians.

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The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be destroyed only 20 years after its construction. To remedy the situation, Gustave Eiffel had the ingenious idea of crediting it with a scientific purpose – the Tower was saved!

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The layer of paint that protects the metal of the Tower is very effective, but it must be periodically replaced. In fact, the Tower has been repainted for over 130 years, about once every 7 years. So if it is repainted, the Eiffel Tower can last... forever.

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But, what if we tell you that there are not one but two Eiffel Towers in Paris currently? Yes, you read that right! A 104-foot replica of the original Eiffel Tower, which looks as real as the original, has been erected near the original tower on the Champ de Mars.

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Egypt rejected the Statue of Liberty because according to the Khedive it was too costly. The original plan was to present the colossal neoclassical sculpture to Egypt to stand at the entryway to the Suez Canal as a beacon of light to Asia.

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The world would have to wait more than forty years before seeing the Tower dethroned by the Chrysler Building in New York (319 m), which was overtaken in 1949 by the Empire State Building (381 m).

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