About Milwaukee's Bastille Days Eiffel Tower

A mark of Milwaukee’s annual celebration of Bastille Day, the 43-foot Eiffel Tower that appears each year in Cathedral Square Park is a testament to the city’s determination.

The tower has had to go through several rounds of repairs and reinforcement to keep up its yearly appearances. There have been a few years that an inflatable Eiffel Tower took the real one’s place, but it always returns, as it did in 2023 after a year of repairs.

The tower was initially built as part of an indoor department store display in the late 1980s, possibly in Minneapolis, according to a 2022 OnMilwaukee report.

The tower was never supposed to be permanent, and it definitely wasn’t meant to be assembled and disassembled each year for its appearance at the festival. But that won’t stop the tower, nor the organizers of the Bastille Day celebration, who are asking for donations to complete more repairs and restoration.

The Eiffel Tower is far from the only French-themed activity of the weekend. There’s also the Storm the Bastille 5K run and walk, in addition to can-can dancers and plenty of French fare. The celebration is meant to honor the storming of the Bastille, the 19th-century French prison, an event that helped to start the French Revolution.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: About Milwaukee's Bastille Days Eiffel Tower