Description
Tower Bridge is the Victorian drawbridge over the Thames beside the Tower of London: two Gothic towers clad in stone, linked high up by walkways, with a road between them that still lifts in two halves to let ships through.
The bridge is free to cross on foot, and the best views of it come from the riverbanks. Inside the towers is the Tower Bridge Exhibition, with films and displays on why and how it was built, up to the two high-level walkways, 44 meters above the river.
From the walkways the view takes in the city, the Tower of London and the Pool of London, the stretch of river upstream. Each one has a glass floor, added in 2014, for looking straight down at the road and the river far below.
The visit ends in the Victorian engine rooms, in a separate building under the south end of the bridge, reached by following a blue line. Here are the original steam engines that once pumped the water that powered the lifting machinery.
The most spectacular moment is the bridge lift. Each of the two leaves, called bascules, weighs over 1,000 tonnes, yet they rise in about five minutes. They open around a thousand times a year, and the times are published in advance on the bridge's website.
The bridge took eight years to build and opened in 1894. Under the stone there is a skeleton of over 11,000 tonnes of steel, clad in Cornish granite and Portland stone so that the bridge would match the Tower of London next door.
The walkways were meant for pedestrians when the bridge was open, but few bothered with the stairs, and they gained a reputation for prostitutes and pickpockets. They closed in 1910 and reopened only in 1982, with the exhibition.
In 1952 the bridge began to open with a double-decker bus still on it. The driver, Albert Gunter, accelerated and jumped the gap onto the other bascule. Nobody was seriously hurt, and the City rewarded him with £10.
A popular story says the American who bought the old London Bridge in 1968 and moved it to Arizona thought he was buying Tower Bridge. Both he and the seller denied it.
Don't miss
• The high-level walkways.
• The glass floors.
• The Victorian engine rooms.
• A bridge lift.
Did you know?
• A chimney on the bridge is painted to look like a lamppost: it served a fireplace in a guardroom inside one of the piers.
• In 1977, for Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, the bridge was painted red, white and blue; it is now blue and white again.
• In 1997 a bridge lift for a sailing barge split President Bill Clinton's motorcade in two.
The bridge is free to cross on foot, and the best views of it come from the riverbanks. Inside the towers is the Tower Bridge Exhibition, with films and displays on why and how it was built, up to the two high-level walkways, 44 meters above the river.
From the walkways the view takes in the city, the Tower of London and the Pool of London, the stretch of river upstream. Each one has a glass floor, added in 2014, for looking straight down at the road and the river far below.
The visit ends in the Victorian engine rooms, in a separate building under the south end of the bridge, reached by following a blue line. Here are the original steam engines that once pumped the water that powered the lifting machinery.
The most spectacular moment is the bridge lift. Each of the two leaves, called bascules, weighs over 1,000 tonnes, yet they rise in about five minutes. They open around a thousand times a year, and the times are published in advance on the bridge's website.
The bridge took eight years to build and opened in 1894. Under the stone there is a skeleton of over 11,000 tonnes of steel, clad in Cornish granite and Portland stone so that the bridge would match the Tower of London next door.
The walkways were meant for pedestrians when the bridge was open, but few bothered with the stairs, and they gained a reputation for prostitutes and pickpockets. They closed in 1910 and reopened only in 1982, with the exhibition.
In 1952 the bridge began to open with a double-decker bus still on it. The driver, Albert Gunter, accelerated and jumped the gap onto the other bascule. Nobody was seriously hurt, and the City rewarded him with £10.
A popular story says the American who bought the old London Bridge in 1968 and moved it to Arizona thought he was buying Tower Bridge. Both he and the seller denied it.
Don't miss
• The high-level walkways.
• The glass floors.
• The Victorian engine rooms.
• A bridge lift.
Did you know?
• A chimney on the bridge is painted to look like a lamppost: it served a fireplace in a guardroom inside one of the piers.
• In 1977, for Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee, the bridge was painted red, white and blue; it is now blue and white again.
• In 1997 a bridge lift for a sailing barge split President Bill Clinton's motorcade in two.