A ten-minute checklist
- Open our daily forecast for each day of your trip.
- Pick the day with the highest visibility figure and the lowest summit wind. If two days are close, pick the clearer one.
- Decide between the golden hour (saturated warm light) and the blue hour (indigo sky + Paris lights). If both appeal, choose a day where the forecast is clear and arrive on the deck forty-five minutes before sunset to catch the whole arc.
- Pre-book a dated ticket on the official SETE site at toureiffel.paris. We cover the ticket categories on the ticket page.
- Dress for the summit, not for the ground. At 276 metres and after sunset the temperature is one or two degrees cooler and the wind can bite. Our what-to-wear note has detail.
- Arrive at the base of the tower twenty-five minutes before your ticketed time.
Family visits
Children under four do not need a ticket. Children between four and eleven have a reduced-price ticket. Strollers are allowed and lifts are available for the first and second floors; the summit lift accepts strollers but is small. On busy days we recommend arriving early (first slot of the day) with young children — the queue is shortest, the crowd is thinnest and the light inside the lift corridors is best for small readers. See our family days note for more.
Accessibility
The Eiffel Tower is wheelchair-accessible to the second-floor platform via a dedicated lift. The summit itself (276 m) is not accessible by wheelchair — the summit lift is small and has a short internal step. If a wheelchair-accessible summit is important, we recommend the Tour Montparnasse (210 m) as the next-best vantage, which has a fully step-free top deck. Our accessibility note has more detail and some pre-visit calls.
Weather doesn't cooperate?
If none of your days has a clear forecast, there are three strategies:
- Go up at sunrise. Even hazy summer days are cleaner at sunrise. The view will not be the postcard, but it will be the best view of a difficult week.
- Go for the atmosphere, not the view. Low-cloud and mist mornings produce a view of the mist that is memorable in its own way — Paris with the top of Notre-Dame and Montmartre poking through a cotton sea.
- Skip the summit, keep the night walk. The best photograph of the Eiffel Tower is from the outside, at blue hour, from the Trocadéro. The summit is a fine experience but not the only one — if the forecast is unanimously poor, keep the night walk and skip the climb.