The Eiffel Tower

Roland Barthes's famous essay on the cultural and symbolic dimensions of the Eiffel Tower, illustrated with stunning black-and-white photographs by André Martin.« The Tower is present to the entire world. First of all as a universal symbol of Paris, it is everywhere on the globe where Paris is to be stated as an image; from the Midwest to Australia, there is no journey to France which isn't made, somehow, in the Tower's name, no schoolbook, poster, or film about France which fails to propose it as the major sign of a people and of a place: it belongs to the universal language of travel. »