As an economic venture, the Eiffel Tower was immediately a success. Completed in 1889 for the Paris International Expositon, the iron lattice structure opened to crowds that had eagerly watched its rapid yet spectacular two-year construction. Within six months, nearly two million visitors had paid to travel to the top, netting the city a total of over six million francs.
“First of all a universal symbol of Paris,” Roland Barthes once wrote of the tower, “it is everywhere on the globe where Paris is to be stated as an image.” Indeed, replicas of the structure now accent skylines around the world--from Hangzhou to Ohio--as La Ville Lumiere is conjured and sold. The most acclaimed representation, perhaps, is in Las Vegas, where a roughly half-scale Eiffel Tower opened in 1999. The Paris Las Vegas Casino also features reproductions of the Arc de Triomphe and the Paris Hotel de Ville, as well as a staff of bicycle-riding accordian players and a nightclub named Risque. This March, Barry Manilow begins a two-year residence at the casino’s Paris Théâtre.
A less well-known yet equally compelling instance of Eiffel Tower replication can be found within a weedy lot on the outskirts of the Romanian city Slobozia. As in Las Vegas, the structure belongs to a larger complex. But unlike The Paris Las Vegas Casino, this amusement park-cum-resort does not promise a "Paris" experience. Instead, “Southfork Dallas in Hermes Land” offers a meticulously crafted recreation of the ranch featured in the television show Dallas. As the only American television programming available in the country during Ceusescu’s regime, the show had an intensely dedicated fanbase in Romania.
The resort, which originally featured such attractions as a horseback rides, a swimming pool, and a small zoo, was built in 1996 by Illie Alexandru, an egomaniacal billionaire known for claiming personal friendship with George H.W. Bush. After Alexandru was jailed for bankruptcy, corruption, and for taking illegal loans, the ranch changed hands several times. More recent owners have painted the buildings a sickly orange, added a number of unsettling cairnlike “gypsy pagodas” throughout the premises, and drained the swimming pool. One of the new owners also erected the Eiffel Tower: the overdetermined symbol of Paris, realized amid a simulation of Texas in Romania.
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A first-hand description of the ranch--in the context of an article that I do not endorse ideologically--can be found here.
An description of a project by Kiev- and Tokyo-based artist Sean Snyder can be found here. (PDF)
