Section of Eiffel Tower staircase goes under the hammer

A section of the helical staircase trod by millions of visitors to reach the summit of the Eiffel Tower is going under the hammer at Artcurial in Paris in May.

Eiffel Tower staircase sections have been sold at auction before. There are 24 of them from when the top two floors of the helical staircase were removed to install an elevator in 1983. There’s one exhibited on the first floor of the Tower today and three more in French museums. The remaining 20 sections, ranging in size from 6.5 to 30 feet high, were sold at auction in December 1983.

The one on sale at Artcurial now is lot no. 1 of the 1983 staircase auction. It is 2.75 meters (9 feet) high with 14 steps spiraling around a riveted sheet metal cylinder mounted on a cross-shaped base. It has been in the same private collection since the sale, and has been restored by the workshops charged with the continuing maintenance of the Eiffel Tower. It is painted brown to match the color it was when the staircase was removed.

Of the twenty sections sold in 1983, few have remained in France and are still in the possession of their original buyers. Several elements have joined prestigious collections and sites around the world. One of them can be seen in the gardens of the Yoishii Foundation in Yamanashi, Japan, another near the Statue of Liberty in New York, and even at Disneyland. Others now belong to major international private collections.

The pre-sale estimate is €40,000 – 50,000 ($46,000-58,000), but it’s sure to go for much more than that. The last time Artcurial sold an Eiffel stair section in 2020, the pre-sale estimate was €30,000-40,000 and it ended up selling for €274,475. It also holds the record for the most expensive set ever sold, section no. 17 which sold in 2016 for €523,800.

The Eiffel Tower took only two years and 200 men to build. The finished structure was 300 meters (984 feet) high and had 1,710 stairs from bottom to top. It was built for the Exposition Universelle, the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. It was intended to be demolished after the Exhibition just like all the other pavilions, but Gustave Eiffel managed to convince the government to let it stand on the grounds that it was a great lookout tower in wartime and the ideal meteorological station in peacetime. Thus the “temporary” showpiece launched a new era in engineering and iron construction and became the forever icon of the city of Paris.

* This article was originally published here