Tour Montparnasse

Tour Montparnasse, officially Tour Maine-Montparnasse, is a 210-metre office skyscraper with 59 floors in the Montparnasse area of Paris, France. It was built between 1969 and 1973. It was the tallest skyscraper in France until 2011, when Tour First (231 metres) in the La Défense business district passed it, and it is still the tallest building inside Paris itself.

The tower is a dark slab of glass and steel standing on top of the Montparnasse-Bienvenüe metro station. On the 56th floor, 200 metres up, there is an observation deck and a restaurant called Ciel de Paris, 'Sky of Paris', and the roof has a terrace as well. On a clear day the view stretches about 40 kilometres, and planes taking off from Orly Airport can be seen.

A long road to the tower

In 1934 the old Montparnasse station seemed too small, and Paris planned to rebuild the district, but strong opposition cancelled the plan. A new master plan in 1956 created a company to redevelop the area, which meant knocking down many run-down streets. When the first studies of a tall tower appeared in 1958, people strongly criticised its height.

The building permit was granted in 1968, the first stone was laid in 1970 and the tower was inaugurated in 1973. It was designed by the architects Eugène Beaudouin, Urbain Cassan and Louis de Hoÿm de Marien and built by Campenon Bernard.

Built above a metro line

Because the tower had to stand right over a metro line, its builders had to protect the tunnels. The foundations are 56 reinforced concrete pillars sunk 70 metres into the ground, and the metro structures were wrapped in a concrete shield so they would not carry the tower's weight. Long horizontal beams freed space in the basement for the train tracks.

The tower is mostly offices, and only the offices around the edge of each floor have windows, a design older than today's habit of giving every office a window.

Loved or hated

Many Parisians have criticised the tower as too big and plain for the city. Two years after it was finished, Paris banned new buildings over seven storeys in the city centre, a rule that was lifted in 2015. A joke says its observation deck has the best view of Paris because it is the only place where you cannot see the tower.

The French climber Alain Robert scaled the outside of the tower without equipment in 1995 and 2015. Since 2012 a set of LED lights has lit up the tower for special events.

On the globe

The model shows the dark, almond-shaped slab tower.