Bank of China Tower
The first skyscraper outside the United States to break 1,000 feet — its glass triangles cut the Central skyline unlike anything around it.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Hong Kong offline.
I. M. Pei designed this 315-metre tower, which held the title of Asia's tallest from 1990 to 1992 before Central Plaza overtook it on the same island. The entire facade is built from triangular glass frameworks — not the rectangular curtain wall of a conventional tower — which gives it a geometry that reads clearly from across the harbour.
What to look for
- Triangular glass curtain wall panels covering the full exterior — the structural logic behind the shape
- The 52.4-metre spire, which pushes total height from 315 m to 367 m
- The Garden Road entrance sign: it still reads 'Bank of China,' not BOCHK, the building's current owner
Reach it via MTR Central station; the building sits between Cotton Tree Drive and Garden Road at 1 Garden Road.
Bank of China Tower is one of 34 sights worth the detour in Hong Kong, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Hong Kong pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Hong Kong
- International Commerce CentreAt 484 m, this is the only building in Hong Kong with more than 100 floors — and it had to be trimmed down so it wouldn't overtop the surrounding mountains.
- Central PlazaA four-bar neon clock 374 metres above Wan Chai changes colour every 15 minutes, blinking at each quarter-hour change.
- Hong Kong DisneylandThe only Disneyland where a walkway was deliberately bent so good qi energy would not drain into the South China Sea.
- The CenterAfter dark, hundreds of neon bars scroll slowly through the full color spectrum from base to crown — a light show wired into the steel itself.
- Tsing Ma BridgeThe span that ended Lantau Island's water-only isolation — 1,377 metres of road and rail hung from two towers.
- Nina TowerDesigned to be the tallest building on earth, then grounded by an airport and split into a memorial for a kidnapped husband who never came home.