London Eye

The story of London Eye

What you’re looking at is the London Eye, the cantilevered observation wheel on the South Bank of the River Thames, and the one thing that makes it stand out immediately is that it rises 135 metres and is held up on just one side by an A-frame. That makes it the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel.

It was conceived by David Marks and Julia Barfield, the husband-and-wife team behind Marks Barfield Architects. Britannica says their project began as an entry in 1993 to a competition for a new London landmark to commemorate the millennium, sponsored by The Sunday Times and Great Britain’s Architecture Foundation. They did not win that competition, but they carried the idea forward themselves, and financial backing from British Airways helped turn it into the structure in front of you.

Construction began in 1998. The wheel was built in sections, floated up the Thames on barges, and assembled lying flat on piled platforms in the river before being lifted upright by a strand jack system. It was raised slowly, at 2 degrees per hour, until it reached 65 degrees. That method is part of what gives the Eye its engineering interest: the rim is supported by tensioned steel cables and it resembles a huge spoked bicycle wheel.

The opening sequence was also unusual. The wheel was formally opened on 31 December 1999 by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who fired a laser beam across the Thames, and Concorde flew past for the occasion. But the first paying visitors did not go up until 9 March 2000 because of a capsule clutch problem. Britannica adds that it had already been ceremonially opened on December 31, 1999, and did not admit its first paying passenger until March 9, 2000.

When it first opened to the public in 2000, it was the world’s tallest Ferris wheel, a title it held until the 160-metre Star of Nanchang in China surpassed it in 2006. For a time it was also the highest public viewing point in London, until The Shard overtook it in 2013.

The Eye sits beside County Hall, between Westminster Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, at the western end of Jubilee Gardens in the London Borough of Lambeth. The nearest tube station is Waterloo, and Waterloo, Charing Cross, Embankment, and Westminster are all within easy walking distance. London River Services stop at the London Eye Pier, so you can also arrive by river.

Its status changed after it began life as a temporary attraction with a five-year lease. In December 2001, operators applied to Lambeth Council to make it permanent, and that was granted in July 2002. A further lease arrangement was agreed in February 2006, after a dispute over rent on part of the land under the struts.

Today it is owned by Merlin Entertainments. It is also one of the best-known symbols of London, and a 2006 government-commissioned survey named it an icon of modern England. Its image has appeared in British passports, on the moquette of some London Underground seats, and in the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics.

If you look at the structure itself, the contrast to older monuments is part of the appeal: this is a modern piece of public engineering, not a tower or spire, and the whole point is to let ordinary visitors rise above the city and look back over it. Richard Rogers put that idea plainly when he wrote that the Eye gave London a symbol and let everybody climb above the city.

Practical details are straightforward: it opens every day from 10:00 AM to 8:30 PM, and the official website is https://www.londoneye.com/. If you want the classic visit, stand here at the riverfront, look for the big wheel’s spoke-like rim, and then follow the line of the Thames toward the bridges.