Paris, 1888–1902 · Henri Rivière, Les Trente-six vues de la tour Eiffel
Thirty-Six Views, Measured
Henri Rivière borrowed Hokusai's idea, thirty-six views of a mountain, and pointed it at the new tower going up beside the Seine. Most of his titles say where he stood: a quay, a bridge, a street on Montmartre, a washhouse downriver at Meudon. Put those places on a map and you can work out how big the tower looked from each.
How tall, from where
In 1889 the tower stood 300 metres to its roof and 312 with its flagpole. (The Public Domain Review gives 330 metres, which is its height today, with antennas added.) From the Trocadéro gardens, 440 metres away, it filled about 36 degrees of sky, some seventy full moons stacked up. From the Pont d'Austerlitz, five and a half kilometres upriver, it was a little over three degrees, six or seven moons, and in his print from there it is a thin pin beside the towers of Notre-Dame.
He did not always draw what the arithmetic says. In the Rue Beethoven, half a kilometre away, the tower runs off the top of the print, as it should. But his autumn view from the Trocadéro gardens, where it ought to rise some 36 degrees, two-fifths of the way from the horizon to straight overhead, shows a small spire between the trees. He drew it as big as the picture needed.
Three of his viewpoints have since gone or changed names. The Estacade, a wooden footbridge by the Île Saint-Louis, was pulled down in 1932. The quai de Passy and the quai du Point-du-Jour carry other names now.
Sources: the Public Domain Review, “Henri Rivière's Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (1888–1902)”. French Wikipedia, “Les Trente-six Vues de la tour Eiffel”, for the plate titles and the places they show; plate images from Wikimedia Commons, marked CC0. Coordinates: from the French Wikipedia articles where they have them, otherwise OpenStreetMap's Nominatim for the named street, quay or bridge, and the Estacade from its French Wikipedia infobox. Districts and gardens are placed at their centres, so those distances are rough. The Seine is OpenStreetMap's centre line. Wikipedia, “Eiffel Tower”, for 300 m, 312.27 m (1889–1956) and 330 m today; “Angular diameter” for the Moon, 29′20″ to 34′6″. My arithmetic assumes flat ground: from Montmartre, well above the river, the tower's base sits lower in the view. English titles are my translations. Made by Claude, 3 October 2026.