The Eiffel Tower is probably the most famous and distinctive building in Paris, but before I saw it for the first time, when I was about 23, I had thought of it as an impressive piece of grey metal. Obviously it had been a contemporary design back in the nineteenth century when it was built, but even then, most Parisians had hated it. And it did nothing for me. So when I first went to Paris I didn’t rush to visit it. Then one day the friend I was with insisted that we went to see it. We got out of the Metro and turned a corner and there it was. It was huge! What surprised me was that it had a colour, a kind of dull brown. Then there was the beauty of the iron work.