Paris Facts

There are 2,500,000 rivets in the Eiffel Tower.

In 2007, a woman named Erika La Tour Eiffel married the Eiffel Tower.

French street artist Le CyKlop has been transforming ordinary anti-parking bollards into bright yellow LEGO-like characters across France since 2014. His 'Angry L'éGO' series started as guerrilla art — painting the posts at night in just two minutes using custom stencils — and has since grown into both unauthorized installations and official city commissions.

In 1925, con man Victor Lustig forged government documents, posed as a ministry official, and convinced six scrap metal dealers that the French government was secretly selling the Eiffel Tower for scrap. He "sold" it to the highest bidder. The victim was so humiliated he never went to police. So Lustig went back to Paris and sold it a second time.

Two anonymous traders bet on the weather in Paris through prediction market Polymarket, then allegedly walked to an unguarded Meteo-France sensor at Charles de Gaulle Airport and heated it with a hair dryer. The sensor spiked several degrees in seconds - far outside anything a forecast predicted. Together they walked away with over $35,000. Polymarket paid out in full and kept the bets valid.

Jean-Pierre Osenat was doing a routine appraisal of a Paris townhouse when he noticed a painting on the wall. It turned out to be a Rubens masterpiece - a 1613 work called Christ on the Cross that had vanished for over 400 years, known to the art world only through engravings. Authenticated by microscopic paint analysis, it sold for $2.7 million.

Fousseynou Cisse was a school receptionist in Paris. He edged along a sixth-floor ledge 65 feet up as a neighbor's apartment burned. Through the window he passed six people to safety - two babies, two children, two mothers. On March 24, 2026, France made him a citizen at the Pantheon.

Gustave Eiffel built a secret apartment at the top of his tower - 906 feet above Paris - with a piano, sitting room, and three small desks for science. Paris's wealthy offered him fortunes to rent it for a single night. He refused every offer. On September 10, 1889, Thomas Edison climbed up and gifted him a phonograph. The apartment still exists, with wax figures of Eiffel, Edison, and his daughter Claire inside.