Some of you are genuine poets. Some are accomplished writers. All of you had something very personal to say.

The task of selecting a handful of winners amongst you was not easy.

How could we choose between a beautiful love story, a recounting of a thrilling cemetery experience, and a meticulously documented walk in a quaint Parisian street?

We had to. And to do so, we came back to the Rules of the Contest.

“An ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE may be a specific location, museum, permanent attraction, permanent feature, architectural detail, sculpture, painting, permanent sign, street, monument, bridge, restaurant, café. It is tangible, physical. It can be photographed. To be considered valid, any submission describing an ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE must specifically describe where it was observed.”

“An ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE cannot be a person, a group of persons, a non-permanent fixture or object or exhibition. An ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE is not a characterization of something or someone, a judgment or a personal view about anything, or the recounting of a personal or collective subjective experience. The personal essay will describe in a personal way the ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE, but the latter must be something that anyone can observe, see, visit, discover.”

And so, after much pondering and re-reading, we had our winners. All three winning essays share these qualities: they are descriptive, well-documented, accurate in their depiction of a Parisian place, and at the same time, personal in the telling.

That’s not to say that most other entries were not as well rounded in their descriptive qualities. Not at all. But then, as we wrote in the Rules, we would have to make choices based on subjective criteria too.

But most and foremost, we eventually favored those essays which, to us, seemed to be the most likely to encourage and help other people to discover Paris.

As to the photographs, we also thank the Contestants who submitted their artwork. We picked one of them, based also on the submission rules.

“A valid Submission can be accompanied by a digital photograph of a maximum weight of 30 KB. Any photograph submitted along a personal essay must show clearly the ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE described in the essay. Photographs submitted may not be considered as valid submissions when they are over/under-exposed, blurry, or when they do not show the ITEM OF KNOWLEDGE described in the essay. Photographs submitted will not show people when they can be recognized. Faces appearing in a submitted photograph must be made unrecognizable.”

One of the entries was best satisfying to all the criteria. We picked it as our winning photograph.

Again, we thank all Contestants. We will hold this Contest again. We hope those of you we did not favor this time will compete again. And if Paris Eiffel Tower News publishes or has other sites publish your essays as well, we will attach your names to them as worthy writers and poets.

And now, to the results!

And the winners are...