The Eiffel Tower is nothing but metal. Over a thousand feet of iron riveted and sledgehammered into a ghastly web of beams and trusses that rises torturously in the Parisian sky. In the harsh daylight, it encumbers the horizon, standing unabashedly in the most romantic city of the world as the most unromantic object in the sky.
Still, come evening, when the horizon deepens into an inky blue, and twenty-thousand lamp glows on this monument, something shifts in its structure. Against the dark background, this tower glows like a lit candle. Its heaviness lightens, its ghastliness ebbs, and the grey cold of iron is replaced by a soft warmth. The monstrous metal is transformed into a melting melody.