| Shard, a star of London’s skyline |
LONDON Twelve years after it was first sketched out, London’s Shard tower, will be inaugurated on Thursday to great fanfare - but Europe’s tallest skyscraper has won as many critics as it has admirers.
The inauguration of the jagged-tipped tower, which at 310m dwarfs nearby landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral and the Houses of Parliament, has been carefully timed.
Branded “an icon for London” by its developers, the Shard will be completed just ahead of the Olympic Games, which open on July 27 and will see around two million visitors pour into the British capital.
With its striking silhouette, 95 floors and a viewing deck offering 360-degree panoramas, developer Sellar Property hopes the Shard can become a major tourist attraction. “It will become as essential a part of a visit to London as going to the top of the Empire State Building is for visitors to New York,” said Irvine Sellar, the company’s chairman. Designed by Renzo Piano, the Italian architect behind the colourful Pompidou Centre in Paris, the tower sits south of the River Thames at the heart of a wider regeneration project in the London Bridge district.
Agence France-Presse
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