A French collector has paid more than €450,000 for a 14-step segment of the Eiffel Tower staircase at an auction in Paris.
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The buyer, who was in the auction room, purchased the 3-metre section of the Eiffel Tower staircase. It dates back to 1889, the year the monument that towers over central Paris was completed.
Weighing in at 1.4 tonnes, it had been valued at between €120,000 and €150,000, but sold for more than three times the upper estimate at €450,000.
“When you buy a piece of the Eiffel Tower, you’re buying a piece of Paris, along with all the imagination and symbolism it represents,” said Sabrina Dolla, Art Deco design director at the Artcurial Paris auction house, where the sale took place on Thursday.
More than four decades ago, a total of 526 metres of staircase were cut into smaller sections and sold, replaced by elevators which now carry visitors to the Eiffel Tower’s highest viewing platform.
They became coveted collector’s items and have found homes around the world.
In 2016, Artcurial sold another 14-step section of the famed staircase to an Asian buyer for €524,000.
The record sale was in 2008, when one section sold to a private American buyer for €550,000.
Other pieces of the Eiffel Tower staircase can also now be found at venues including the Statue of Liberty in New York and the gardens of the Yoshi Foundation in Yamanashi, Japan.
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Olympic boost
Dolla said the Paris 2024 Olympics, which saw landmarks including the Eiffel Tower, Place de la Concorde and the Grand Palais take centre stage, had boosted the tower’s appeal among collectors.
“We’re definitely seeing a renewed interest in what it symbolises and in its aesthetic appeal,” she said.
Engineer Gustave Eiffel created the Eiffel Tower for the Paris World Fair in 1889. It is now one of the world’s top tourist attractions and the most visited paid monument in France. In 2025, 6.75 million visitors paid to access the various levels of the Eiffel Tower – an increase of 7 percent from 2024.
(with newswires)
