The Gherkin
A 180-metre glass bullet whose curved skin is an optical trick — only one pane on the whole tower is actually bent.
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Foster + Partners hung 41 floors of flat glass on a fully triangulated perimeter frame — engineered by Arup to keep the tower rigid without extra reinforcement — then capped it with a 39th-floor restaurant and a 40th-floor bar for tenants and their guests, high over the City.
What to look for
- The lens-shaped cap at the apex — the single piece of curved glass on the entire building. Every other 'curved' panel is flat.
- The triangulated diagonal grid wrapping the exterior: Arup designed it so the frame alone makes the tower rigid, needing no extra reinforcement.
- You're on the old Baltic Exchange site, wrecked by the 1992 Provisional IRA bomb — its salvaged material was shipped to Tallinn, Estonia, still awaiting reconstruction.
The 40th-floor bar is for tenants and their guests, above a 39th-floor restaurant and 38th-floor private dining rooms — so the best public view is from the street.
The Gherkin is one of 40 sights worth the detour in London, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the London pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in London
- British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.