{"id":28180,"date":"2013-08-06T08:54:14","date_gmt":"2013-08-06T04:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/?p=28180"},"modified":"2013-08-06T08:54:16","modified_gmt":"2013-08-06T04:54:16","slug":"the-eiffel-towers-new-rival-gothic-tower-in-the-heart-of-paris-opens-to-the-public-for-the-first-time-in-500-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/en\/?p=28180","title":{"rendered":"The Eiffel Tower’s new rival: Gothic tower in the heart of Paris opens to the public for the first time in 500 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tour<\/a>It has stood in the heart of Paris for more than 500 years – yet very few people will have heard of the Gothic Tour Saint Jacques.<\/p>\n

But that is all about to change after the 170-ft high structure built in the 1500s has been opened to the public for the entire summer for the first time.<\/p>\n

The 62-metre (203-foot) stone tower offers visitors stunning bird’s eye views from the heart of Paris – provided they have the energy to walk up its 300-step spiral staircase and pay the \u20ac6 euro entrance fee.<\/p>\n

Adorned with gargoyles and topped by a 3.5-metre statue of St James the Apostle, the tower is all that remains of the medieval church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, pillaged and destroyed by French revolutionaries in the late 18th century.<\/p>\n

The bell tower – which will be open until September 15 – was spared for its beauty and possibly to be used as a watchtower to spot the capital’s frequent and deadly fires, curators say.<\/p>\n

In the early 19th century, the bells were removed and Tour Saint Jacques became a smoke-spewing ‘shot tower’, or ammunition plant.<\/p>\n

Molten lead passed through a sieve and dropped from the top of the tower to land in a tub of water in the shape of a bullet. Later, it hosted a meteorological station until the 1990s.<\/p>\n

The Tour Saint Jacques underwent a meticulous \u20ac8.3-million restoration between 2000 to 2009, during which time it was shrouded by scaffolding and decades of pollution were scrubbed from each of its stones.<\/p>\n

The city of Paris granted a local association an exceptional permit to organize summertime visits until September 15.<\/p>\n

‘We would like it to be open for a longer period each year,’ said Remi Riviere, head of the association. ‘If we get a lot of visitors this summer and nobody jumps from the terrace then hopefully the city will give us the green light.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has stood in the heart of Paris for more than 500 years – yet…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,146,224,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-editors-choice","category-europe","category-news","category-world","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive2.ankakh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}