Incidentally, also said[0] about the Eiffel Tower and the Tour Montparnasse. (I agree with this last one, both at height and at ground level. I've long said that if I were a billionaire, I'd buy the tower just to tear it down.)

[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/08/10/tower/?amp=1

Time redeemed one of those but the other is still called an ugly eye sore to this day…

Montparnasse is a perfect example of cities in France going "on a second thought, let's not build more skyscrapers right in the middle of cities" in the 70s. See also: Part-Dieu, Tour Bretagne, Pleyel.

It's obviously hard to pin down, but apparently it took Parisians about 20-30 years to go from hating the Eiffel Tower to loving it. Tour Montparnasse hasn't managed to achieve that in the 50 years since it was built.

> Tour Montparnasse

Aka the box the Eiffel Tower came delivered in

I think that joke is told about literally every either ugly or retro famous building/landmark in the world.

If it's not referring to the best view, it's always where some famous architect claimed to stay when they visited, in order not to see the building from their window.

Wikipedia:

> A 2008 poll of editors on Virtualtourist voted the building the second-ugliest building in the world, behind Boston City Hall in the United States.

That is concerning another building Montparnasse Tower (which also has a plan to change it https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-paris/articles/15115...)

still better than the De Young in SF, which looks like someone asked MidJourney to combine an abandoned mall parking structure with a concentration camp tower

how can they not love it? it looks amazingly playful

That quip doesn't really work like it does for its more usual target, the Eiffel Tower, because unlike the tower you also can't see the Pompidou Centre from pretty much everywhere in Paris, except right next to the Pompidou Centre