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The Earful Tower: Paris

In charge of an icon: A chat with the Eiffel Tower's director

The Earful Tower: Paris

Oliver Gee

Arts, Paris, Society & Culture, Travel, Places & Travel, France

4.8749 Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we scale the Eiffel Tower with its managing director Patrick Branco-Ruivo. 

What are his tips for visiting? His favourite view? And what would he ask if he had Gustave Eiffel himself on the telephone?

Join us on this exciting opportunity to explore one of the world's most iconic landmarks with the maestro behind it all. And hang around - we'll get some exclusive access to the underground section at the end. 

Find the video version of this chat (in short and long form) on this link soon:

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheEarfulTower

Music by Pres Maxson.

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The Earful Tower exists thanks to support from its members. From $10 a month you can unlock almost endless extras including bonus podcast episodes, live video replays, special event invites, and our annually updated PDF guide to Paris. 

Membership takes only a minute to set up on Patreon, or Substack. Thank you for keeping this channel independent. 

For more from the Earful Tower, here are some handy links:

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, everybody. Oliver G here from the Eiffel Tower podcast, and today I'm going to take you up

0:06.1

the Eiffel Tower with the managing director of the monument itself, Patrick Branco-Ruivou.

0:13.8

So this, a little background before we get into it, I reached out. In fact, I met Patrick

0:20.8

at an event that was in one of the rooms halfway up the Eiffel Tower, an event about Paris, and we just got chatting. I saw his lapel pin in the shape of the Eiffel Tower. It was gold, and I was curious about it. We got chatting. It was a really friendly guy. I mentioned my podcast and he said,

0:38.2

why have I not been on your show before? And I said, we can arrange that. And then emailing to

0:43.1

set it up, they said, what exactly do you want? And I said, well, an audio thing for the podcast,

0:49.3

maybe a video, maybe both. And they said anything, let's do it. And so, we filmed up there too. We took

0:57.4

Harry the cameraman, who regular listeners will surely be aware of, the guy who filmed a lot of the

1:04.7

walk shows, he can walk backwards and film, which turns out to be a perfect skill to have for going up the Eiffel Tower, because what happened is we went up to the first floor, the second floor, and even down in the basement that's not open to the public at all, to see all the pistons and how it all works and everything. So when we met Patrick at the base of the Eiffel Tower, I said, how long do we have you for? I know he's a busy

1:28.2

man. I was wondering, it could be 10 minutes, could be five minutes. And he said, you got me for 90 minutes.

1:34.9

And I was like, perfect. And we hit record and we went for it. So what we're going to do? You're

1:41.6

going to hear a sort of edited version of that conversation,

1:45.2

the bits that work best for audio. If you're a more visual person on the YouTube channel,

1:50.0

we're going to have a 10-minute sort of highlight version of that 90 minutes, sort of all the best

1:55.6

quick bits. And then if you really want to get to know Patrick and the Eiffel Tower, we've got about a 45-minute episode video that we're going to share in a sort of premiere live thing that we can all watch together, also on YouTube.

2:11.3

So all the details will be in the show notes for exactly when you can watch them, how you can watch them, and so on.

2:17.0

But for now, here's the audio version. Me and Patrick walking around the Eiffel Tower, talking about the Eiffel Tower, this show, the Eiffel Tower, gosh, it's almost a tongue twister, isn't it? This show is brought to you by the Patreon and Substack members and the Eiffel Tower Tours. That's's walking tours of the Marais, Latin Quarter and

2:36.0

Montmart. Get in touch. In fact, you don't even need to get in touch. Just book it on the

2:39.8

earfultower.com slash tours. You might even meet me. I typically do Monday morning in the Marais,

2:46.8

but we have a bunch of guides who are exceptional as well. So get in touch or just book it and let us show you Paris.

2:54.0

Surely the best way to see this city.

2:56.5

In fact, last I checked it was in the top 25 things to do in Paris full stop,

...

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