François Tajan auctioned a 15-step wrought iron segment of the Eiffel Tower's 1889 spiral staircase on 25 November at the Artcurial auction rooms in Paris. Consigned from a Swiss collection, it was 12ft high, weighed 750kg, was estimated at €20,000, and on the day sold to a Portuguese bidder for €212,500.
 
In 1983 the original staircase was dismantled into 24 sections, varying in height from 6ft to 30ft. A section was preserved on the first deck of the Eiffel Tower, and others at Musée d'Orsay and Musée de La Villette, both in Paris, and another at the Musée de l'Histoire du Fer in Lorraine.
 
The remaining 20 segments were sold at an auction staged on the first deck of the Eiffel Tower on 1 December 1983. The sale was a huge success, attracting buyers from around the world. Some sections have since again changed hands at auction, like the 9-foot section sold to a private American buyer for €550,000 - ten times estimate - in 2009.
 
Artcurial's auction catalogue gives more:
 

Other segments of the original Eiffel Tower staircase can now be found at prestigious venues around the globe: in the gardens of the Yoshii Foundation in Yamanashi (Japan); at Disneyland; and close to the Statue of Liberty in New York. Some have remained in France: two were acquired by the singer Guy Béart; two more by the Paris suburban towns of Levallois-Perret (where Gustave Eiffel is buried) and Nogent-sur-Marne. Others are now in private foreign collections, notably in Canada, Switzerland, Italy and Brazil. Meanwhile the French sculptor César recuperated pieces discarded in 1983 for use in his sculpture Hommage à Eiffel.
 
The Eiffel Tower, designed by Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923) and erected for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, swiftly became the emblem of Paris and one the most famous monuments in the world.
 
Construction began in 1887 and lasted 2 years, 2 months and 5 days. The 1063-ft high Dame de Fer (Iron Lady), inaugurated on 31 March 1889, dominated the city and symbolized French industrial might. Although it was attacked by the famous Artists' Protest (Protestation des Artistes) published in Le Temps on 14 February 1887 - signed by Guy de Maupassant, Charles Garnier, Alexandre Dumas fils and others - it proved an instant popular success, attracting 2 million visitors during the Exposition Universelle.
 
This technical tour de force remained the world's tallest building until the Chrysler Building was erected in New York in 1930. As a powerful symbol of Modernity, the Eiffel Tower has never ceased to inspire writers, artists, photographers and film-makers. Robert Delaunay and Germaine Krull celebrated its aesthetic appeal and its sheer 'matter.'
 
'High, airy, light, openwork,' to quote Roland Barthes, who also (in La Tour Eiffel, 1964) evoked the Eiffel Tower as follows: 'An object, a symbol, a point of view... the Eiffel Tower is everything people see in it, and this everything is never-ending. A sight we survey and which surveys us in return... a construction both useless and irreplaceable... a familiar world and an heroic symbol, witness to a century yet forever new... an inimitable object that is constantly reproduced... a pure sign, open to all types of weather, image and meaning: an unbridled metaphor... through the Tower, men can exercise that great function of their imagination, freedom - as no episode of history, however dark, has ever been able to take it from them.'

The Eiffel Tower weighs 7,300 tonnes.