Eiffel Tower Tickets

The Eiffel Tower is the wrought-iron lattice tower Gustave Eiffel built for the 1889 World's Fair, and it is open every day of the year. It suits first-time visitors, families with older kids, and anyone who wants the definitive view over Paris from the 7th arrondissement.

What Is The Eiffel Tower Known For?

The Eiffel Tower is the one Paris icon no museum pass covers, and it stands open every single day of the year. Built by Gustave Eiffel's engineering firm for the 1889 World's Fair, the wrought-iron lattice structure on the Champ de Mars was meant to be temporary and instead became the most recognizable silhouette in France.

That permanence is the practical headline for visitors. Where the Louvre closes on Tuesdays and many state museums shut one day a week, the tower runs its elevators and open staircases 365 days a year, in August heat and on December 25 alike. There is no weekly closing day and no free day, which is unusual in a city that gives away a surprising amount of its patrimony. If your itinerary collapses because of a holiday closure, this is the monument that keeps working.

The second thing it is known for is the pass problem. The Paris Museum Pass, which covers the Arc de Triomphe and dozens of other sites, deliberately excludes the tower, as the Paris Museum Pass site makes clear in its coverage list. Travelers who arrive assuming their pass will get them up the tower discover they still need to buy a ticket separately. This page exists partly to prevent that surprise. The pass remains a good buy for the museums and monuments it does cover, but budget for the tower on its own.

What you actually get for that money is a 1,062-foot ascent in stages. The first floor, at 57 meters, holds the glass floor section that terrifies and delights in equal measure, plus exhibits on the tower's history and engineering. The second floor, at 116 meters, is where most photographers spend their time, because the viewing angle over the city hits its stride there. The summit, at 276 meters, adds a small champagne bar sense of occasion and a restored office designed to look as it did when Eiffel himself received guests there. Reviewers consistently say the second floor alone justifies the trip, and that the summit is a decision about time and money rather than a necessity.

The structure itself rewards a slow look before you even enter. It was assembled from 18,038 iron pieces, puddled iron worked in Eiffel's own workshops, and the visible precision of the riveted lattice is a large part of why it survived the critics who wanted it torn down after the fair. Look up through the legs from the Champ de Mars and you are looking at 1889 engineering that still functions daily.

Tickets And Prices: What Each Option Covers

The tower sells four door-price ticket types, and timed entry is compulsory, meaning you choose a date and time slot when you buy rather than turning up and queuing freely. Lift tickets to the summit cost €36.70, lift tickets to the second floor cost €23.50, and stairs to the second floor cost €14.80. Children's and concession rates exist but you should confirm current categories before you plan around them.

The ticket you pick shapes the whole visit, so it is worth matching it to your legs, your budget, and your patience. The lift-to-second-floor ticket at €23.50 is the workhorse choice, covering the two-stage elevator ride to the 116-meter level with full access to its outdoor terraces. The stairs ticket at €14.80 is the same destination, 674 steps up, and it is the option regulars recommend for a morning visit: the climb is stair-master honest but steady, the queues are shorter, and you can still buy a lift down at the second floor kiosk if your knees disagree with the plan. Only the €36.70 summit ticket includes the third stage, the 276-meter top, reached by a separate elevator from the second floor.

Timed entry is the part that trips people up. Every ticket carries an assigned slot, and arriving well outside it can mean being turned away or pushed to the back of a line. In high summer the slot discipline is strict. The official Eiffel Tower site manages the schedule and is where the museum's own door prices are published, so treat that as the reference for anything this page does not carry a figure for. If you would rather sort a ticket before you build the rest of your day around it, the booking panel on this page sells the same timed entry and saves you the ticket-office line, which is the one practical reason to use it.

One honest comparison point. The 4.2 rating across 649 reviews puts this among the better-reviewed paid monuments in the city, and reviewers regularly report that the timed-entry system works, even at peak times, better than the old free-for-all queues ever did. The complaints that pull the average down tend to be about crowding at the summit rather than about the product itself.

Note what is not on that table: the Paris Museum Pass. It does not cover the tower in any form, and there is no free day at any point in the year. Plan the tower as a standalone purchase.

How Long To Allow And When To Go

Allow two hours for a second-floor visit and closer to three for the summit, counting security screening, the ride up, time on the platforms, and the way down. The tower opens every day of the year with no weekly closing day, so the real variable is not whether it is open but how crowded your chosen day will be.

Morning is the calmest window, and it is not close. Arrive for a slot before 10:00 and the platforms feel airy, the light over the city is clean from the east, and the stair route is genuinely pleasant rather than a conga line. Midday to early afternoon is the crush: school groups, tour buses, and every visitor who slept in converges between 11:00 and 16:00. Late afternoon into evening shifts the character again, with the sunset slots the most competitive of the day because the golden hour over the Seine and the west of the city is the postcard shot.

The season matters as much as the hour. July and August bring the heaviest demand of the year, and slot tickets for good times sell out days ahead. May, June, and September give you the same weather with thinner crowds and shorter security lines. Winter is the sleeper option: the city's palettes are grayer, but the tower runs at a fraction of summer density, and on a clear cold day the visibility from the summit stretches surprisingly far. Whatever the season, the timed-entry rule means you can anchor your slot early and build the rest of the day around it rather than gambling on a walk-up wait.

One structural note on time. The visit is sequenced, not free-roaming: you clear security at the base, take the first lift or stair climb, and then, for summit tickets, transfer to the second lift at the second floor. Coming down at peak times can involve a line for the descent elevator that nobody budgets for, which is exactly why the three-hour estimate for a summit visit is realistic rather than cautious. If you have a dinner reservation or a last-closed-entry monument later in the day, take the down-elevator queue into account. Visitors regularly report that the descent, not the ascent, is where a tight schedule goes wrong.

For pairing purposes, a morning tower slot ends by noon, which lines up neatly with lunch on the Champ de Mars or a short ride across the river to the Musée d'Orsay's afternoon entries. The tower's morning-quiet pattern is the single most useful scheduling fact on this page.

At A Glance

The Eiffel Tower stands at Champ de Mars in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, at coordinates 48.85813, 2.2945. It is open every day of the year with no weekly closing day and no free day, it is excluded from the Paris Museum Pass, and timed entry is compulsory for every ticket type. Allow two to three hours depending on your level.

The table below is the compressed version of everything verified on this page. It is deliberately short. Where a fact is not confirmed, the row is left out entirely rather than approximated, so you will find no opening or closing hours here: the tower publishes a seasonal schedule, and the official site carries the current times for the date you plan to visit. Build from what is here and confirm the one moving piece there.

A few notes on using this practically. The 7e arrondissement location puts you in the museum-dense Left Bank, and the coordinates above are worth pasting directly into a mapping app if your phone struggles with the Champ de Mars address, which is a wide esplanade rather than a single street number. Because there is no closing day, the tower works as the flexible block in a Paris week: shift it to whatever day the weather looks best, and there is no calendar conflict to check.

What the table cannot capture is scale. The three levels are far enough apart that a second-floor visit and a summit visit are genuinely different products, and people who budget only 90 minutes for a summit slot routinely underestimate the loop time. Treat two to three hours as the honest number and the day falls into place around it.

Know Before You Go

Arrive 30 minutes before your timed slot, bring photo identification for any discounted or nominative ticket, and expect an airport-style security screening at the base. The tower sits in a public park, the Champ de Mars, so reaching the entrance itself involves a walk through the gardens from whichever direction you arrive.

Getting there is straightforward because the 7e is one of the best-served districts in the city, with multiple Métro and RER stops within a short walk of the Champ de Mars esplanade. Rather than name a single best station, pull the coordinates 48.85813, 2.2945 into a transit app and let it route you from wherever you are staying; the approaches from the river side, along the Seine quays, make for the most enjoyable final stretch on foot. If you are coming from the Right Bank, crossing one of the bridges, Bir-Hakeim or Pont d'Iéna, gives you the classic approach views on the way in.

Accessibility is a real strength on the lift route. The elevators serving the first and second floors take wheelchairs and strollers, and the second-floor terraces are level with wide walkways. The stair route is of course not accessible, and the summit, reached by a separate lift from the second floor, can be reached by visitors who cannot manage stairs as long as they hold a lift ticket. Families should note that strollers are generally brought up by lift without issue, though space in the cabins is tight at peak times.

Bag rules follow the airport pattern. Large luggage, suitcases, and bulky bags are not permitted, and there is no left-luggage facility at the monument, so plan the tower before hotel check-in or after check-out, not between the two with your roller bag in tow. Small bags pass through screening normally. Food is sold on the levels, including a champagne point at the summit, so do not weigh yourself down carrying supplies.

The final and most important preparation point is the ticket itself. Timed entry is compulsory, slots in high season sell out ahead, and the doors at the tower cannot honor a pass or a free entry because neither exists. If you have not yet locked a slot, the booking panel on this page sells timed entry directly and removes the ticket-office queue from your morning, which is worth doing before you arrive rather than on the Champ de Mars with 40 minutes to spare.

What Is Nearby Worth Pairing With

The tower sits in the 7th arrondissement, which puts the Musée d'Orsay, the Rodin Museum, the Invalides, and the Seine crossings all within a 20-minute walk or a short ride. The strongest pairings are a morning tower slot followed by an afternoon across the river, or a tower visit bolted onto a Right Bank monument circuit.

The classic Left Bank morning works like this: book a pre-10:00 tower slot, spend two hours on the levels, and come down by noon with the whole neighborhood still ahead of you. The walk east along the quays to the Musée d'Orsay takes about half an hour and doubles as the best open-air tour of Haussmann's riverbanks. If you would rather go grander, the Palace of Versailles makes a full-day pairing, though not on the same day as a summit visit, as you would be doing two of the region's longest queues in one outing. Pair the tower with Versailles on separate days, and save the pairing for another time with Versailles tickets arranged in advance for the day you go.

Cross the river and the options sharpen. The Arc de Triomphe is the natural structural foil, a monument that does appear on the Paris Museum Pass where the tower does not, and whose rooftop terrace gives you the tower itself in the skyline, the one view the tower cannot offer. Done as a late-afternoon ascent, it bookends a morning at the tower with an evening panorama down the Champs-Élysées. For a shorter cross-river stop, Sainte-Chapelle delivers concentrated gothic stained glass in an hour, and slots neatly between a tower morning and lunch on the Île de la Cité.

If you prefer to stay on the Left Bank, the 7e keeps you busy without transport. The Rodin Museum's sculpture garden is a 15-minute walk, the Invalides and Napoleon's tomb sit just behind it, and the Rue Cler market street covers lunch with picnic supplies you can take back to the Champ de Mars, which is exactly the kind of low-cost afternoon the tower's expensive morning balances out.

The honest planning advice is to give the tower its own half-day and not to sandwich it between two other timed entries. The security line, the descent queue, and the inevitable extra twenty minutes on the second-floor terrace, because the view over the rooftops rewards lingering, all stretch a two-hour plan toward three. Anchor the tower in a morning, pair it with one leisurely neighbor, and leave the marathon circuits, Versailles plus Orsay plus everything, to visitors who enjoy their vacation at a sprint.

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