It seems so natural to think of the Eiffel Tower when talking about Paris. Right from the start, it was an obvious choice. We had to do something about it. Something that had never been done before, that would allow us to get to know it better, to discover it, to look at it and to gauge it. A fresh look.
We all know the Iron Lady, but how many of us really know who she is? Even its famous name, that of its builder, is not that of its inventor. Did you know that the Eiffel Tower was not the brainchild of Gustave Eiffel? That it was merely an improved bridge pylon? That the Iron Lady was first, for some, the shame of Paris, before becoming its emblem?
How many secrets is she hiding? Its success erased its setbacks from popular memory. Its triumph at the 1889 Universal Exhibition made people forget just how far from self-evident its existence was. The Countess de Poix, who lodged a complaint against the City of Paris, fearing that this immense iron construction would spoil her panorama, had no idea that what she was trying to avoid would, on the contrary, be sought after by the whole of Paris a century later: a view of the Eiffel Tower.
At a time when the legitimacy of the Eiffel Tower no longer needs to be proven, it's great fun for the rest of us to mock the concerns of an era when, apart from cathedrals, the tallest buildings were no more than three or four storeys high.
In the end, that's why we chose to start our adventure with the Eiffel Tower. We think we know everything about it, because we've known it all our lives. We can't imagine Paris without it. For us, it's a given. But on further reflection, we realized that few of us are capable of telling its story. The extent to which its appearance in the capital's landscape profoundly shocked, astonished and fascinated 19th-century Parisians.
That's the challenge we've set ourselves. Our aim is not only to tell the story of its construction, but also to convey the emotions it aroused. In the guided tour we're proposing, virtual reality will enable us not only to imagine the excitement of the Champ-de-Mars at the time, but also to experience it for ourselves.
In the end, it's often what we've always had in front of us that we know the least about.