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The Eiffel Tower has three levels open to visitors and four ways to buy access to them. The pricing is not complicated, but the choice people regret is almost always the same one.
The levels
First floor, at 57 metres, has a glass floor section, a restaurant and exhibition space. It is the least visited and the cheapest.
Second floor, at 115 metres, is where most people go and where the best photographs of Paris are taken. High enough to see the city laid out, low enough to recognise what you are looking at.
Summit, at 276 metres, is the top. Champagne bar, Gustave Eiffel’s restored office, and a view that reaches to the edges of the city.
The counterintuitive part
The second floor has the better view.
From the summit you are high enough that Paris flattens into a map. Landmarks shrink, streets blur, and the sense of scale disappears. It is impressive as an altitude, less so as a view.
From the second floor you can see the Arc de Triomphe, the Seine curving through the city, Sacré-Cœur on its hill, and the pattern of Haussmann’s boulevards. It reads as a city rather than a diagram.
Photographers know this. Most of the images you have seen of Paris from the Eiffel Tower were taken from the second floor.
So who should book the summit
Book it if the altitude itself is the point — if being at the top of the Eiffel Tower matters to you as an experience rather than as a viewpoint. That is a completely legitimate reason and plenty of people feel it.
Book it if you want the champagne bar, which is genuinely a nice thing to do at sunset.
Do not book it expecting a better view of Paris. You will get a different one.
Stairs or lift
The second floor can be reached by stairs — 674 steps — or by lift.
The stairs are considerably cheaper, the queue is usually much shorter, and the climb takes most people 20 to 30 minutes at an unhurried pace. You also see the structure from inside, which is more interesting than it sounds — the ironwork close up is the reason the tower is famous among engineers.
The summit always requires a lift from the second floor. There are no stairs to the top for visitors.
If you are reasonably mobile and not in a hurry, the stairs are the better purchase: cheaper, faster to board, and a better experience of the building.
When tickets are released and what sells out
Tickets go on sale roughly 60 days ahead.
Summit tickets sell out first, and in summer they can disappear within days of release.
Sunset slots are the most contested of all — the hour before sunset, when the city lights come on while there is still colour in the sky. If that is what you want, book on the release date, not near your travel date.
Second floor tickets, particularly stairs tickets, remain available much longer.
The evening light show
Every hour after dark, for five minutes, the tower’s twenty thousand bulbs sparkle.
This is free and best seen from outside the tower, not from it — from Trocadéro across the river, or from the Champ de Mars below. If your ticket is for a sunset slot, you will be inside the tower during the first sparkle, which is the one time being on it is worse than looking at it.
Plan to see one sparkle from the ground at some point in your trip. It costs nothing.
Practical details
Security screening is airport-level. Arrive 30 minutes before your slot.
Large bags and luggage are not permitted on site at all, and there is no storage. This catches out people arriving on their departure day.
The tower is open every day of the year.
Wind closes the summit sometimes, without warning. If that happens you are refunded the difference, but your plan for the evening is gone.
The short version
| You want | Book this |
|---|---|
| The best view of Paris | Second floor |
| To have been to the top | Summit |
| Best value, and don’t mind climbing | Second floor by stairs |
| Sunset with a drink | Summit, booked on release day |
| The sparkling lights | Nothing — watch from the ground |
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