A part of the original spiral staircase of the Eiffel Tower was sold at auction in France for nearly 450,000 euros. This was reported by the auction house Arcurial on Friday, May 22.
It is a section about 2.7 meters high with 14 steps. Before the auction, its value was estimated at 120,000 to 150,000 euros. A French collector, whose name is not disclosed, named the highest price and became the owner of the artifact.
The sold fragment connected the second and third levels of the Eiffel Tower. It was up this spiral staircase that visitors ascended during the 1889 World’s Fair, for which engineer Gustave Eiffel created the tower.
The structure, weighing almost 1.4 tons, had been in a private collection for over 40 years. Before the sale, it was restored by specialists who work with the Eiffel Tower itself.
The staircase was dismantled after modernization
In 1983, the staircase between the second and third levels of the tower was dismantled during modernization. It was deemed too dangerous for visitors and replaced with modern elevators.
After that, the structure was cut into 24 pieces of various sizes. Today, individual fragments are located at the Statue of Liberty in New York, in museums and private gardens in Japan, and one of them is in Disneyland. Other parts of the staircase ended up in major private art collections.
The tower was to be demolished after 20 years
The Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 World’s Fair. Initially, the structure was considered temporary, and it was planned to dismantle it after the exhibition.
However, over time, the tower came to be regarded as the main symbol of Paris and today is one of the most visited structures in the world, reports "Deutsche Welle."
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