About seven million people a year visit the Eiffel Tower, but next May, one person will have the chance to take a piece of it home, as a 137-year-old section of the monument’s original staircase is scheduled to go up for auction.
Designed by the French engineer Gustave Eiffel and built for the 1889 World’s Fair, the Eiffel Tower once featured a spiral staircase that provided access from the second level to the summit. In 1983, as part of a modernization project, workers dismantled the stairs to install elevators.
The staircase was divided into 24 pieces, of which four were donated to museums and 20 sold at auctions. This particular section, which is currently owned by an unidentified French businessman, was put back on the market to be resold next month.
At a height of about nine feet and consisting of 14 steps, the piece is “a true testament to the history of the Eiffel Tower and, beyond that, to universal history,” said Sabrina Dolla, a director at Artcurial, the auction house handling the sale, in an email to The New York Times.
She noted that the piece up for auction was the first to go on offer during the 1983 sale and that for the original buyer, “it therefore took a certain amount of courage to be the first to enter the battle.” For more than 40 years, the collector kept the stairs in a storage unit.
The item was recently restored by artisans responsible for the maintenance of the Eiffel Tower.
The price, however, may discourage some. According to Artcurial’s website, the piece is estimated to be worth 120,000 to 150,000 euros, or between about $146,000 and $176,000. But Ms. Dolla believes she has “every reason to be ambitious,” given previous sales and the rarity of these pieces.
Even before its construction was complete, the Eiffel Tower was the subject of fierce debate. In 1887, prominent French artists and literary figures called it “useless” and “monstrous.” The controversy eventually died down and gave way to praise for the structure, which was an engineering marvel for its time.
This is the latest of several sections of the staircase to be sold by the auction house. In 2016, another part fetched €523,800 ($611,000), a record that Ms. Dolla would like to surpass. She is hopeful.
For her, the item represents not just a piece of history but “a truly immersive object, a stationary journey through time and space.”
Of the 24 sections, some have remained in France, notably at the Musée d’Orsay and the Cité des Sciences. Others can be found near the Statue of Liberty in New York City and in the gardens of the Yoishii Foundation in Japan.
Ms. Dolla anticipates that the potential buyers will be international, with a wide variety of bidders, ranging from private collectors and cultural institutions to companies looking to adorn their headquarters.
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