On this day in 1889 the Eiffel Tower officially opened. Towering nearly a thousand feet over the streets of Paris, Gustave Eiffel’s monument to the centenary of the French Revolution is formally dedicated. Many French intellectuals deem it an eyesore, but it will come to be regarded as a harbinger of the modern age and a cultural icon of France.
Featured image courtesy of Al Ianni, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons