before the end of the Games are kept in the Tower. According to some, the grim notoriety of Tower Bridge led German pilots to select it, during the Blitz of 1940, as their reference landmark for the bombing of London's East End.Yet, despite its gruesome reputation and gothic architecture, Tower Bridge somehow managed to become the overarching symbol of London's epic history. London Bridge is the oldest bridge in the British capital, the Millennium Bridge the most recent, Waterloo the most romantic and Richmond the most bucolic. But none of these sell as many picture postcard as Tower Bridge. The "Wonder Bridge", as the press dubbed it upon its opening on June 30th, 1894 by the then Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, rivals Big Ben as the image tourists most often associate with the capital of the United Kingdom.During the latter half of the 19th century, London was the largest city in Europe. With 5 million inhabitants, it was splitting at the seams. As the capital of an empire spanning a quarter of the Earth's surface and encompassing a quarter of its inhabitants, it laid claim to the title of the world's largest port. At the time, the country had the highest concentration of ships arriving from all over the globe, thanks to its blossoming trade with areas outside of Europe. The gigantic network of wharfs, warehouses and docks received inbound goods from the country's colonies and dominions, and launched outbound ships laden with products made in the Kingdom.However, the city centre's port was geographically bound to London Bridge,sac burberry, an area choked by monstrous bottlenecks made up of crowds and unsteady, slow-moving, horse-pulled vehicles. While ten bridges had been built upriver from London Bridge since the 18th century, not one had appeared downriver despite the boom in port-related activity. The need for a new structure to link the two banks of the river was made even more pressing by the rapid growth of the railway network and the creation of train stations in the city center.The plans to build a new bridge were obstructed, however, by the joint efforts of the Lord Mayor and the boatmen's guild. The former wanted London Bridge to keep its monopoly on the traffic towards the North Sea. The latter were defending their threatened livelihood. Faced with such opposition, London's town council opted for a compromise and started digging tunnels under the river,pantalons Burberry. In 1843,t-shirts Burberry, the first pedestrian subway was constructed beneath the Thames, between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The Tower Subway, linking Greenwich and Limehouse, was opened in 1871. But the movement of the tides and the pressure of the water damaged the structure of the galeries, which were poorly suited for road traffic. On top of that, the tunnels were said to be haunted by the spirits of those presumed dead and buried for centuries. Their ceilings were also quite low, and tall gentlemen often complained of having their hat sploiled.For all these reasons, in 1884, Parliament decided to approve a plan presented by architect Horace Jones and engineer John Wolfe Related articles:

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