Gustave Eiffel’s Secret Office at the Summit of the Eiffel Tower
High above Paris, Gustave Eiffel built a private office at the summit of his tower. Visitors today can still peek inside and see wax figures of Eiffel, Edison, and Claire Eiffel in the restored 19th-century setting.
At the very top of the Eiffel Tower, above the champagne bar and the tourist cameras, sits a room few know about. Gustave Eiffel carved out an apartment for himself when he built his iron giant in 1889. It wasn’t a home. There was no bed. Instead, it was a stage — part laboratory, part salon, part personal refuge — floating nearly 1,000 feet above Paris.
Inside, the atmosphere is still frozen in the 19th century. Leather-bound books line a case, wallpaper blooms in ornate patterns, and brown furniture holds the weight of history. Wax figures recreate the moment Eiffel welcomed Thomas Edison, phonograph in hand, while his daughter Claire stands nearby. Through the glass, visitors peer into this private world, imagining the conversations that once bounced off its walls: royalty, actors, engineers, Buffalo Bill himself.
Eiffel didn’t keep the apartment just for prestige. He demanded it in exchange for financing three-quarters of the tower, and used it as a laboratory for weather studies and radio transmissions. His great-granddaughter even called it a “mountain air” escape. After his death, the space filled with antenna equipment until restorers clawed back a corner of it for public view.
No one can walk inside now — the door is locked, the windows are the only portal. But even through the glass, you feel the weight of its secrets. The tower isn’t just Paris’s symbol of romance; at its peak, it holds the ghost of its maker, still listening, still watching the city he changed.
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