Eco calls it a "foul metal spider" and I think that's grossly unfair; I see the tower nearly every day of my life, and however vile my mood, I almost always take a moment and think, "how beautiful". It's especially lovely up close at night, of course (they turn off the lights at between midnight and two, depending, and it's funny - I always thought that the extinguishing of the tower would be a majestic thing, that they would slowly fade down to black, but no - all the lights go off in banks, toc, toc, toc, like, "last guy out of the Tower turn off the lights and lock the door," and it's anticlimactic. Once someone must have missed a switch, because I looked out at four in the morning, and half the southwest leg was lit but nothing else) but even in the daylight it has never been anything to me but warm, light, and friendly. I remember once writing a letter to a friend while sitting on the grass by the fountains of the Palais de Chaillot (just across the river from the tower), looking up at it, and writing to my friend that I felt a sense of well-being and security, as if it was some sort of giant iron sentinel, protecting us all.