How many people visit the Eiffel Tower each year?

How to get close to this number

The constraint is throughput, not demand. Lifts and staircases can only move so many people an hour, the tower is open most of the day most of the year, and queues are the limiting factor rather than interest. Hourly capacity times opening hours times days produces a ceiling in the millions, and the monument runs near it.

That is why it holds the record for most visited paid monument rather than most visited attraction. Free sites and open spaces have no throughput limit and receive far more people; anywhere with a ticket, a lift and a security check is bounded by how fast it can process a queue. The superlative is a statement about admission control as much as about popularity.

The cumulative figure is the one that conveys its age: around three hundred million people since it opened. A structure built as a temporary exhibition piece for an 1889 world's fair, and scheduled for demolition, has been climbed by more people than live in the United States. It survived because it turned out to be useful as a radio mast.