PARIS, FRANCE: A portion of the original staircase of the Eiffel Tower was sold for 180,000 euros - 10 times the estimated price - at an auction in Paris Monday (November 19th).

The 20-step piece - 4.5 metres high and weighing 700 kilograms - was bought after hectic telephone bidding by a Dutch legal consultancy that goes by the name of Eiffel.

"We really had to get this staircase, as a symbol to help our business and our teams climb ever higher. A kind of metaphor, no?" said Eiffel's Erik Kurvers.

The spiral section was part of the flight leading from the second to the third levels of the tower. It was scaled by Gustav Eiffel himself at the inauguration in 1889, when the lift was not yet in service.

One of 24 sections of the staircase removed in 1983 during renovation work, it had been in private hands ever since. Another section can be seen at the Statue of Liberty in New York.