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The artwork? Just 24 rust-coloured steps, arranged in a spiral. Yet this section of staircase sold for 450 160 euros on Thursday 21 May at an auction at the Artcurial auction house. And with good reason: these 24 steps once formed part of the 1,665 that run up the Eiffel Tower.
This fragment of the Iron Lady, 2.75 metres high, once formed part of the helical staircase that connected the second and third floors of the tower when it was inaugurated in 1889. During renovation work on the monument in 1983, when lifts were installed, the staircase was dismantled and cut into 24 sections.
Few of these sections “have remained in France and been kept by their original buyers”, according to Artcurial.
The appearance on the market of this particular piece, coming from a private collection where it has spent 40 years, is rare enough for the initial estimate for the 24 steps to have been set between 120,000 and 150,000 euros.
Even with a final price tag of 450,160 euros, this section of the Eiffel Tower staircase is still a long way from the record. In 2016, a similar segment put up for sale by the Sotheby’s auction house went for 523,800 euros.
Besides being able to boast that they own a piece of one of Paris’s emblems, buyers are also bringing their collection into a very exclusive and prestigious circle of sites and collections that house a section of the Iron Lady’s staircase.
Other segments have been installed, among other places, in the gardens of the Yoishii Foundation in Yamanashi, Japan, another near the Statue of Liberty in New York, and even at Disneyland.