Roue de Paris

Unlike most ferris wheels found at local amusement parks, this one really moves. As per its name, this wheel originates in Paris, but has been transported to other fairs from Birmingham, England, to Manchester, the Netherlands, Geleen, Amsterdam, Gateshead, Bangkok, Kyiv, and many other cities around the world.

The Roue de Paris is a 60m (200ft) tall transportable ferris wheel, originally installed on the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France, for the 2000 millennium celebrations. However, it is not the first transportable big wheel to lift passengers into the French skies.

One Hundred years earlier, in 1900, the Grande Roue de Paris was a 100m (328ft) tall ferris wheel, the tallest in the world, built for the Exposition Universelle world exhibition at Paris. Financing the “Grande Roue de Paris” happened by the creation of the “Paris Gigantic Wheel and Varieties Company” and selling the shares of this company.

The Grande Roue was  at the time of its opening. The passenger cars were so large that they were removed from the wheel and used as homes for French families when the region was devastated by World War I.

What the two Roue wheels have in common was the system that kept them in place. Water ballasts weighing over 365 tons provided a solid foundation for the Roue’s. The only difference being, when each was disassembled, the Roue was loaded onto 18 trucks, while the Grand Roue was broken down by merchants so they could use the cabins as shops.