50 free Eiffel Tower trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
49 free Eiffel Tower trivia questions with answers. The Eiffel Tower was supposed to come down in 1909. This quiz covers why it did not, and everything else about the most visited paid monument in the world: the 1889 World's Fair it was built for, the two engineers who actually drew it, the artists who called it a tragic street lamp, the 2.5 million rivets, the private apartment where Edison dropped in, and the radio mast that helped catch Mata Hari. The easy questions are for anyone who has stood under it. The hard ones ask about the con man who sold it for scrap, the priest who found cosmic rays on it, the airplane flown beneath it, the general who refused to blow it up, and the Canadian city that tried to borrow it. There are also questions on the paint, the lifts, the restaurants and the sparkle. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the tower, and each question carries a quotation from it as its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city does the Eiffel Tower stand?
Paris
It rises from the Champ de Mars, a park on the Left Bank of the Seine.
Q 02The tower is named after which engineer?
Gustave Eiffel
His company designed and built it between 1887 and 1889, though the design itself came from two of his senior engineers.
Q 03The tower was built as the centrepiece of which event?
The 1889 World's Fair
The fair marked the centenary of the French Revolution; the tower was only meant to be temporary.
Q 04What is the tower's local nickname, 'La dame de fer', in English?
The Iron Lady
It comes from the wrought iron the tower is made of; the metal weighs about 7,300 tonnes.
Q 05Roughly how tall did the Eiffel Tower become after its 2022 aerial extension?
330 metres
That is about the height of an 81-storey building; a new aerial added in March 2022 took it to 330 m. The 1957 broadcasting aerial had pushed it above the Chrysler Building again.
Q 06How many levels of the tower are open to visitors?
Three
There are restaurants on the first and second levels and a champagne bar at the top.
Q 07How many steps does it take to climb from the ground to the second level?
About 600
Each stage is a little over 300 steps; the staircase continues to the top but is normally closed to the public.
Q 08Which structure did the Eiffel Tower overtake to become the world's tallest human-made structure?
The Washington Monument
It kept the title for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building was finished in New York in 1930.
Q 09Which New York skyscraper took the world's-tallest-structure title from the Eiffel Tower in 1930?
The Chrysler Building
The tower had been the first structure ever to pass both the 200-metre and 300-metre marks.
Q 10Which two engineers at Eiffel's company are credited with the tower's design?
Koechlin and Nouguier
Koechlin sketched the 'great pylon' at home in May 1884; architect Stephen Sauvestre later added the decorative arches.
Q 11What did architect Stephen Sauvestre add to the engineers' original design?
Decorative arches at the base
The arches are purely ornamental; they made the tower look more substantial and gave the fair a grand entrance.
Q 12How many rivets hold the tower's 18,038 iron pieces together?
2.5 million
Parts arrived by horse-drawn cart from a factory in Levallois-Perret; anything that did not fit was sent back rather than altered on site.
Q 13How many workers died during the tower's construction?
One
Eiffel's movable gangways, guardrails and screens made it unusually safe for its era, with 300 people on site.
Q 21The names of how many French scientists and engineers are engraved on the tower?
72
Eiffel called it an 'invocation of science' to answer the artists' protests; the names were painted over and restored in 1986-87.
Q 22What was Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt testing when he died jumping from the first level in 1912?
A parachute suit
He jumped from 57 metres; the fall was captured on film by newsreel cameras.
Q 23What did Father Theodor Wulf incidentally discover by taking measurements at the tower's top and bottom in 1910?
Cosmic rays
He found more radiant energy at the top than expected, which pointed to radiation from beyond the atmosphere.
Q 14Who led the 'Committee of Three Hundred' of artists protesting the tower?
Charles Garnier
The Paris Opera architect called it a 'truly tragic street lamp'; there was one member for each metre of the planned height.
Q 15Which writer supposedly lunched in the tower's restaurant daily because it was the one place he couldn't see it?
Guy de Maupassant
He was one of the signatories to the artists' protest against the 'useless and monstrous' tower.
Q 16On 31 March 1889 Eiffel led officials to the top on foot. Roughly how long did the climb take?
Over an hour
The lifts were not working yet; he stopped often to explain features and hoisted a Tricolour at the top to a 25-gun salute.
Q 17How many visitors climbed the 1,710 steps to the top before the lifts started running in May 1889?
Nearly 30,000
By the end of the exposition nearly 1.9 million people had visited; the top ticket cost 5 francs.
Q 18Which inventor visited Eiffel's private apartment at the top and gave him a phonograph?
Thomas Edison
Other famous 1889 visitors included Sarah Bernhardt and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West show played at the fair.
Q 19The tower was originally due to be dismantled in which year?
1909
Its usefulness as a radio-telegraphy mast saved it, and it joined the International Time Service in 1910.
Q 20What saved the tower from its planned demolition?
Its value for radio telegraphy
In 1914 its transmitter jammed German communications before the First Battle of the Marne.
Q 24A message intercepted by the tower's wireless station in 1917 helped convict which famous spy?
Mata Hari
The coded message between Germany and Spain referenced 'Operative H-21'; the dancer was executed by firing squad.
Q 25Which car maker's illuminated name covered three sides of the tower from 1925 to 1934?
Citroën
It was the tallest advertising space in the world at the time.
Q 26Which con artist 'sold' the tower for scrap metal, twice, in 1925?
Victor Lustig
He posed as a government official and picked scrap dealers as marks; the first victim was too embarrassed to go to the police.
Q 27What did the French do to the tower's lifts when Germany occupied Paris in 1940?
Cut the cables
They were not repaired until 1946; German soldiers had to climb on foot to hoist a swastika flag that blew away within hours.
Q 28Which general did Hitler order to demolish the tower along with the rest of Paris in 1944?
Dietrich von Choltitz
He famously did not carry out the order; a Tricolour was back on top by 25 August.
Q 29A communications mast in which Japanese city, inspired by the Eiffel design, became the world's tallest tower in 1958?
Tokyo
Tokyo Tower is a red-and-white homage; the Eiffel Tower remains the tallest freestanding structure in France.
Q 30Which Canadian city reportedly negotiated to borrow the tower for its 1967 world's fair?
Montreal
Mayor Jean Drapeau's secret deal with de Gaulle was allegedly vetoed by the tower's operating company.