The London Eye

The London Eye began life as a competition entry that lost. Architects David Marks and Julia Barfield designed it for a contest to mark the year two thousand, no winner was ever chosen, and they decided to build it anyway. It opened on the South Bank in March two thousand, intended to stand for only five years. It is still turning, and it is now the most visited paid attraction in the United Kingdom.

Getting it upright was its own drama. The wheel was assembled flat on platforms in the Thames and then lifted into position in stages over about a week, a slow and very public piece of engineering theatre. Each of the thirty-two sealed capsules represents one of London's boroughs, and they are numbered one to thirty-three, because superstition means there is no capsule number thirteen.

It moves so gently that it never stops for you. The wheel turns at about a quarter of a metre per second, slow enough for passengers to step on and off while it is still rotating, and a full rotation takes around thirty minutes. On a clear day the view from the top, one hundred and thirty-five metres up, reaches roughly forty kilometres, as far as Windsor Castle.

Because it sits directly across the water from Westminster, it has quietly rewritten the London skyline. A structure designed as a temporary celebration now appears in almost every photograph of the city, standing opposite buildings that are centuries older.

If you keep walking, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben are just across Westminster Bridge, the South Bank promenade leads to the Tate Modern, and Borough Market is a twenty-minute stroll downriver.