• The writer Guy de Maupassant detested it so much that he had lunch in the tower restaurant as often as possible because it was only in the tower itself that you did not have to look at it.
• Two million people visited the Eiffel tower in its first year and it became ever more popular as the years went by. Looking at the tower became just as important as looking from the tower. Slowly the Eiffel Tower became the pre-eminent symbol of Paris and of France. It was painted by important artists and praised by poets and novelists.