The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be demolished. Built for the 1889 World Fair as a temporary demonstration of iron engineering, the structure that Parisian intellectuals called "useless and monstrous" was saved only by the installation of a radio transmitter in 1906.

Gustave Eiffel gambled much of his own fortune on the project and won spectacularly: two million visitors climbed the tower in its first year alone. His workers assembled 18,000 iron parts and 25 million rivets without a single fatal accident, though one man did fall to his death on a weekend while showing off to his wife. On completion day, Eiffel himself climbed all 1,710 steps to unfurl the tricolour at the summit.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace the tower's journey from condemned curiosity to global icon, revealing how the same engineer designed the Statue of Liberty's hidden skeleton and why the 72 scientists honoured on the ironwork include no women.