The Eiffel Tower in Paris is one of the world’s most iconic landmarks, so rumors that the structure could be damaged or destroyed naturally grab people’s attention.
That’s what happened in January 2024 when a TikTok viewed about 4 million times appeared to show the iconic French tower ablaze. And while that video was posted Jan. 21, different images and videos of a burning Eiffel Tower began showing up on X and TikTok at least a week earlier. By Jan. 22, “did the eiffel tower catch on fire 2024” became a popular Google search.
THE QUESTION
Did the Eiffel Tower catch fire in January 2024?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, the Eiffel Tower did not catch fire in January 2024.
WHAT WE FOUND
There is no evidence the Eiffel Tower has been on fire at any point in the past month. The viral video of flames spewing out of the Eiffel Tower was most likely created using CGI.
VERIFY searched for previous instances of the viral TikTok video using two online tools; InVid, a video forensics tool, to isolate individual frames within the video, and RevEye, a reverse image search tool, to find where else those frames were posted online.
That search uncovered a July 18, 2023 version of the exact same video posted to YouTube. The video’s tags include CGI, short for computer-generated imagery, and 3ds Max, a computer graphics program.
Additionally, VERIFY checked recent livestream footage of the Eiffel Tower and recent messages from official accounts associated with the Eiffel Tower and the city of Paris.
A current check of an Eiffel Tower livestream run by Vision-Environnement, a French company that specializes in live tourist webcams, shows no sign of fire, damage or construction work. There also isn’t any visible damage on this livestream of the Eiffel Tower hosted by a meteorology website called meteo-paris.com.
Meteo-paris.com allows visitors to look through daily timelapses of its livestreams from the past two weeks. VERIFY watched each timelapse from Jan. 8-21 and could not see a fire at any point over the last two weeks.
The Eiffel Tower’s official website has not released any recent news about a fire on or within the tower. Neither has the Eiffel Tower’s X account, Instagram account or Facebook account.
The Paris Fire Brigade has not said anything about a recent Eiffel Tower fire on its website or social media accounts.
Finally, the mayor of Paris has not posted any official statements about a fire at the Eiffel Tower and neither has the city’s police department.
There are other TikTok videos with hundreds of thousands of views that appear to show the Eiffel Tower on fire. However, the captions of these videos clarify that they were created with AI, such as the caption for this video, or otherwise explain that the video is fake, like in this video’s caption.
The VERIFY team works to separate fact from fiction so that you can understand what is true and false. Please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter, text alerts and our YouTube channel. You can also follow us on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Learn More »
