Ever recieved a postcard from the Eiffel Tower? Then you know something about the longing. For 110 years now, people all over the world have opened their mailboxes and there it is: I made it to Paris. I miss you. Right now I'm standing under the Eiffel Tower.

And you want to be there.

Gustave Eiffel's 300-meter extravaganza, built for France's 1889 International Exhibition, occupies the mindscape of fantasy, decades after it was supposed to be torn down. (Torn down?) Sacrebleu!

It goes with the music. It smells like fresh croissants and cafe au lait. It's like the cat with the accidental white stripe on her back, sliding down the side of it to escape Pepe Le Pew. We know this tower. We paint it. We have meteorites streak by it in science-fiction disasters. It suggests to us that no matter where we are, whatever drudgery we are doing, we can close our eyes and, magically, we'll always have Paris.

It wasn't always that way. Three hundred artists spoke out against it in a petition during the first phase of its construction, in 1887. "We, the writers, painters, sculptors, architects and lovers of the beauty of Paris do protest with all our vigour and all our indignation. In the name of French taste and endangered French art and history, against the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower..."

It's something to remember when you unveil anything: the crowd won't like it.

But there it is, symbolic of romance, symbolic of sticking to your original idea. Voila. La Tour Eiffel. I miss you. I love you. I'll be here.