Leaning Tower of Pisa

Location Pisa, Italy

Coordinates  43°43′23″N 10°23′47.10″E normal view / satellite view / 3d view / street view
Construction started 1173
Completed 1350

Website http://www.opapisa.it/en/home-page.html

The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italian: Torre pendente di Pisa) or simply the Tower of Pisa (Torre di Pisa) is the campanile, or freestanding bell tower, of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa, known worldwide for its unintended tilt to one side. It is situated behind the Cathedral and is the third oldest structure in Pisa's Cathedral Square (Piazza del Duomo) after the Cathedral and the Baptistry. The tower's tilt began during construction, caused by an inadequate foundation on ground too soft on one side to properly support the structure's weight. The tilt increased in the decades before the structure was completed, and gradually increased until the structure was stabilized (and the tilt partially corrected) by efforts in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

The height of the tower is 55.86 m (183.27 ft) from the ground on the low side and 56.70 m (186.02 ft) on the high side. The width of the walls at the base is 4.09 m (13.42 ft) and at the top 2.48 m (8.14 ft). Its weight is estimated at 14,500 metric tons (16,000 short tons). The tower has 296 or 294 steps; the seventh floor has two fewer steps on the north-facing staircase. Prior to restoration work performed between 1990 and 2001, the tower leaned at an angle of 5.5 degrees, but the tower now leans at about 3.99 degrees. This means that the top of the tower is displaced horizontally 3.9 metres (12 ft 10 in) from where it would be if the structure were perfectly vertical 

Sagrada Familia

Location  Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Coordinates  41°24′13″N 2°10′28″E normal view / satellite view / 3d view / street view
Construction started 1882
Website www.sagradafamilia.cat
Cellphone 932 07 30 31

Specifications
   Capacity              9,000

   Length                 90 metres (300 ft)
   Width                   60 metres (200 ft)
   Width (nave)       45 metres (148 ft)
   Spire(s)               18 (8 already built)
   Spire height        170 metres (560 ft) (planned)


The Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família (English: Basilica and Expiatory Church of the Holy Family), commonly known as the Sagrada Família, is a large Roman Catholic church in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, designed by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. Although incomplete, the church is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and in November 2010 was consecrated and proclaimed a minor basilica by Pope Benedict XVI.

Though construction of Sagrada Família had commenced in 1882, Gaudí became involved in 1883, taking over the project and transforming it with his architectural and engineering style—combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms.

Gaudí devoted his last years to the project, and at the time of his death in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was complete. Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly, as it relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War—only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s. Construction passed the midpoint in 2010 with some of the project's greatest challenges remaining and an anticipated completion date of 2026—the centennial of Gaudí's death. The basílica has a long history of dividing the citizens of Barcelona—over the initial possibility it might compete with Barcelona's cathedral, over Gaudí's design itself, over the possibility that work after Gaudí's death disregarded his design, and the recent possibility that an underground tunnel of Spain's high-speed train could disturb its stability.

Describing Sagrada Familia, art critic Rainer Zerbst said "it is probably impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art" and Paul Goldberger called it 'the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages'.
 

St Basil Cathedral

 

Location  Red Square, Moscow, Russia

Coordinates  55°45′9″N 37°37′23″E  normal view / 3d view / street view

Construction started 1555

Completed  1560

Specifications

   Dome  9

   Spire   2

Website  Cathedral of St. Vasily the Blessed

                State Historical Museum  

The Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat or Pokrovsky Cathedral - both are official names used by the Russian Orthodox Church - also known as the Cathedral of St. Vasily the Blessed but popularly as Saint Basil's Cathedral, is a Russian Orthodox church erected on Red Square in Moscow in 1555–61 on orders from Ivan the Terrible. It commemorates the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan.

St. Basil's marks the geometric center of Moscow. It has been the hub of the city's growth since the 14th century and was the city's tallest building until the completion of the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in 1600.

The original building, known as "Trinity Church" and later "Trinity Cathedral", contained eight side churches arranged around the ninth, central church of Intercession; the tenth church was erected in 1588 over the grave of venerated local saint Vasily (Basil). In the 16th and 17th centuries the church, perceived as the earthly symbol of the Heavenly City, as happens to all churches in Byzantine Christianity, was popularly known as the "Jerusalem" and served as an allegory of the Jerusalem Temple in the annual Palm Sunday parade attended by the Patriarch of Moscow and the tsar.

The building is shaped as a flame of a bonfire rising into the sky, a design that has no analogues in Russian architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, in his book Russian Architecture and the West, states that "it is like no other Russian building. Nothing similar can be found in the entire millennium of Byzantine tradition from the fifth to fifteenth century ... a strangeness that astonishes by its unexpectedness, complexity and dazzling interleaving of the manifold details of its design." The cathedral foreshadowed the climax of Russian national architecture in the 17th century.

As part of the program of state atheism, the church was confiscated from the Russian Orthodox community as part of the Soviet Union's anti-theist campaigns and has operated as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928. It was completely and forcefully secularized in 1929 and, as of 2012, remains a federal property of the Russian Federation. The church has been part of the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. It is often mislabelled as the Kremlin owing to its location on Red Square in immediate proximity of the Kremlin.

Great Wall of China

Country  China

Coordinates  40.67693°N 117.23193°E

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC these, later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty.

Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.

The Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure 8,850 km (5,500 mi). This is made up of 6,259 km (3,889 mi) sections of actual wall, 359 km (223 mi) of trenches and 2,232 km (1,387 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measure out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi).

Eiffel Tower

Location  Paris, France

Coordinates  48.8583°N 2.2945°E normal view / street view

Construction started  1887

Completed  1889

Record height: Tallest in the world from 1889 to 1930  

Height 

   Antenna spire  321.00 m (1,063 ft)

   Roof                 300.65 m (986 ft)

   Top floor          273.00 m (896 ft)

Technical details

   Floor count  3

   Elevators  9

Opening Hours

   January 1st to June 14
       Tower: 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
       Elevator: 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. (Final ascension 11:00 p.m./10:30 p.m. top floor)
       Stairs: 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (Final admission at 6:00 p.m.)

   June 15th to September 1st
       Tower: 9:00 a.m. to midnight
       Elevator: 9:00 a.m. to 12:45 a.m. (Final ascension at midnight/11:00 p.m. top floor)
       Stairs: 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. (Final admission at midnight)

   September 2nd to December 31st
       Tower: 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
       Elevator: 9:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. (Final ascension 11:00 p.m./10:30 p.m. top floor)
       Stairs: 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (Final admission 6:00 p.m.) 

Prices
       2nd floor - 8.50 euros
       3rd floor - 14.00 euros

Contact Info

   Metro  Bir Hakeim or Trocadero (Line 6), Ecole Militaire (Line 8)
   RER  Champs de Mars-Tour Eiffel (Line C)
   Buses  42, 69, 72, 82, 87
   Taxi station  Quai Branly, Pilier West
   Phone  33 (0) 1 44 11 23 23

   Website  http://www.eiffel-tower.com/

The Eiffel Tower (French: La Tour Eiffel, nickname La dame de fer, the iron lady) is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Erected in 1889 as the entrance arch to the 1889 World's Fair, it has become both a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest structure in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world; 7.1 million people ascended it in 2011. The third level observatory's upper platform is at 279.11 m the highest accessible to public in the European Union and the highest in Europe as long as the platform of the Ostankino Tower, at 360 m, remains closed as a result of the fire of August 2000. The tower received its 250 millionth visitor in 2010.

The tower stands 320 meters (1,050 ft) tall, about the same height as an 81-storey building. During its construction, the Eiffel Tower surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of the tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930. However, because of the addition, in 1957, of the antenna atop the Eiffel Tower, it is now taller than the Chrysler Building. Not including broadcast antennas, it is the second-tallest structure in France, after the Millau Viaduct.

The tower has three levels for visitors. Tickets can be purchased to ascend, by stairs or lift (elevator), to the first and second levels. The walk from ground level to the first level is over 300 steps, as is the walk from the first to the second level. The third and highest level is accessible only by lift - stairs exist but they are not usually open for public use. Both the first and second levels feature restaurants.

The tower has become the most prominent symbol of both Paris and France, often in the establishing shot of films set in the city.