Viality Tour brings together the real and the virtual

The photos immortalizing the major stages in the erection of the Eiffel Tower, when it was still known simply as the "300-metre Iron Tower", are very famous, but don't allow you to fully immerse yourself in this impressive construction site. Today, thanks to virtual reality, it's possible to walk around the Tower and relive the era of the Universal Exhibition, an event that attracted over 28 million visitors to the French capital and commemorated the centenary of the French Revolution.

How? By following in the footsteps of an enthusiastic guide who, as you walk up the Champ de Mars, tells you the story of the monument that now represents France to the world. Thanks to virtual headsets, you can also discover the building's original environment and, as you stand right where our ancestors first discovered this veritable technical feat, you can see, as they did, the other architectural treasures that surrounded it at the time and even... cross paths with Gustave Eiffel!

• The Champ-de-Mars as it was before the Tower was built: a training ground for soldiers of the Republican Guard, who virtually pass right by us.
• The first phase of construction, where the first floor was built in just 10 months and highly skilled workers can be seen busy at work while enjoying an impressive panorama of Paris in 1887.
• The various buildings designed for the World's Fair. Arranged around the Tower, which then served as the “gateway” to the event, these pavilions, each in the colors of a different country, are so faithfully reconstructed that it feels as if you could walk right inside them. After a breathtaking flight over them, we climb up to the balcony of the Palais de l'Industrie to take in a panoramic view of this 10th edition of the great world event, which attracted 32 million people in 1889!