Eiffel Tower

Hi! The Eiffel Tower is amazing! What were you hoping to get out of a tour? Do you want to focus on history? Architecture? Social history? What are you wanting to learn?

There are lots of ways to contextualise the Tower and the folks on here will have excellent information if you let us know your specific interests. :-)

Happy travels!

just buy tickets -- why pay extra for a tour guide, to explain what exactly?

I guess my question should have been - does anyone know of a reliable place to buy tickets from? The Eiffel Tower web site is sold out. We don't particularly need a tour. However, we need to be able to use an elevator to the second floor area.
Thank you so much.

The only reliable place to buy tickets is on the official Eiffel tower website. https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/planning-smooth-visit

The lore is that a batch of tickets is often dropped 7 days ahead at 1 p.m. Paris time, but I would just keep checking for your dates. FWIW I just checked at 10 a.m. pacific time and there are second floor elevator tickets available for those dates.

Thank you, CL for this information and even checking the dates!
Unfortunately, the only time available right now is 11 PM and it may be because we need 3 tickets that no other times are appearing.
I will keep checking and will definitely keep the 1 week ahead timeline in mind, when more tickets are released.

I'll stick with the direct Eiffel Tower website for tickets.

Thank you very much.

I just searched on August 16 and 17 for 3 adult tickets to 2nd floor by elevator and it says 11 p.m. is available, so maybe clear your browser cache and look again.

Also another thought, you might try getting 2 for one time slot and 1 for the next one after, if that ends up being a possibility. The first two can wait on second floor for the third to join you.

I don't think the 7 day rule works -- but when I was getting tickets to the top for my 8 year old grandson in April, they were sold out consistently and then a few days before he arrived like 4 or 5, suddenly I had no trouble getting tickets. Before that tickets to the second level had been available, but I was able to get them to the top. We ended up having a rainy ay -- the plus of that is no lines -- we literally just walked up and got on the next elevator to the second floor and then had almost no wait for the elevator to the top. Wet? Yeah. Windy? yeah. Foggy -- well yeah but not totally so there was plenty gaps to spot various landmarks. And the plus, the kid has bragged ever since at our great luck of having a rainy day with no lines. We made a point of extolling the virtues of that on the day. And he is always a good sport.

Thank you, CL for the idea about trying various options for getting tickets!

Janettravels44 - Great that your grandson will have such wonderful memories about his Eiffel Tower experience.
Glad that through perseverance you were able to get tickets.

Janettravels, completely unrelated to this story, but I'll tell you anyway.

About ten years ago we had a family visit to the US, with a group of ten of us (!!). I had skip the line tickets for the Empire State Building, and we kept putting it off until the last day.

Sadly, it snowed, as it was January. We thought we might as well go up anyway, although there were no lines whatsoever, also very few views.

What our six teenagers in our two families got however was a snowball fight with the security people on the top deck.

That is something they will never ever forget, and even the photos of it are great.

Luckily we also got the view from Top of the Rock on a different, sunny, day.

Just piling on with weather stories. Several years ago I was in Paris without a ticket to Tour Eiffel. It had been cloudy and rainy all morning, but in watching the weather and radar maps (I am a bit of a weather geek), I could see that the rain would be clearing out late morning—even though that wasn't forecast until much later. I went online and found a ticket (likely because many people ruled out going in the rain). As I was going up the stairs to the first level the rain ended, the clouds broke, and by the time I got to the very top it was an absolutely beautiful day with incredible views.

I visited last December. I just showed up and waited in a line to get my ticket on the spot. It took about 45 min but the line was slowly moving. The longest line was at the security. I don't know if they still sell walk-ins?

I don't know if they still sell walk-ins?

They do sell day-of tickets but in busy tourist season August you may not to be lucky finding them at the time you want.

Great weather story, PharmerPhil! Good idea about looking at the radar and not just relying on forecasts.

I think they sell walk-in tickets, which is something we could try if nothing else works. Thank you for your reply, Kootah.
Thanks, also, CL - for pointing out that in August it may be hard to get the time we need.

Back in October I had a ticket to visit the tower, but it was cancelled two hours before due to a strike by employees. Days later, after the Paris and the Heart of France tour, I had a few extra days in Paris, and one day another tourmate and I decided to try just walking up and buying tickets. We arrived around 4pm, and there was almost no lineup, and we got elevator tickets to the second level, and walked onto the next elevator.
The reason I thought this might work is because a friend of mine had done the same thing. She hadn’t planned to go up the tower, but was there late afternoon and saw there wasn’t much of a line so walked up and bought a ticket.