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{{B}}Eiffel Is an Eyeful{{/B}} Some 300 meters up, near the Eiffel Tower's wind-whipped summit the world comes to scribble. Japanese, Brazilians, Americans — they graffiti their names, loves and politics on the cold iron — transforming the most French of monuments into symbol of a world on the move. With Paris laid out in miniature below, it seems strange that visitors would rather waste time marking their presence than admiring the view. But the graffiti also raises a question: Why, nearly 114 years after it was completed, and decades after it ceased to be the world's tallest structure, is la Tour Eiffel still so popular? The reasons are as complex as the iron work that graces a structure some 90 stories high. But part of the answer is, no doubt, its agelessness. Regularly maintained, it should never rust away. Graffiti is regularly painted over, but the tower lives on. "Eiffel represents Paris and Paris is France. It is very symbolic," says Hugues Richard, a 31-year-old Frenchman who holds the record for cycling up to the tower's second floor — 747 steps in 19 minutes and 4 seconds, without touching the floor with his feet. "It's iron lady, it inspires us," he says. But to what? After all, the tower doesn't have a purpose. It ceased to be the world's tallest in 1930 when the Chrysler Building went up in New York. Yes, television and radio signals are beamed from the top, and Gustave Eiffel, a frenetic builder who died on December 27, aged 91, used its height for conducting research into weather, aerodynamics and radio communication. But in essence the tower inspires simply by being there — a bland canvas for visitors make of it what they will. To the technically minded, it's an engineering triumph. For lovers, it's romantic. "The tower will outlast all of us, and by a long way," says Isabelle Esnous, whose company manages Eiffel Tower. |