How many metres tall is the Eiffel Tower?

How to get close to this number

Anchor on the modern skyscrapers on this site and adjust down. The tallest building today is over eight hundred metres and the Empire State is around three hundred and eighty; a nineteenth-century iron tower sits just below the latter, at around three hundred and thirty metres with antennas.

It held the world record for four decades, which is the context that makes the height meaningful. A structure nearly twice the height of anything built before it, erected in iron in the 1880s, was a demonstration that a new material could do something stone could not.

The survival story in the explanation is the best part: built for a world's fair, scheduled for dismantling after twenty years, and saved only because it turned out to be useful as a radio transmitter. The most recognisable structure in Europe exists because a temporary exhibit found a second job before its demolition date.