Millennium Dome

The Millennium Dome stands on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London. It is a vast white dome-shaped building with twelve 100-metre-high yellow support towers. The structure is circular, 365 metres in diameter, and one of the largest of its type in the world. The architect was Richard Rogers, and the building was engineered by Buro Happold. The roof is made of PTFE-coated glass fibre fabric panels, with each of the 72 segments containing two panels. A ventilation shaft from the Blackwall Tunnel rises through a hole in the canopy. The Dome was built to house a major exhibition celebrating the start of the third millennium. It opened in 1999 and was visited by barely half of the 12 million visitors its sponsors had forecast. The exhibition included 14 zones such as Body, Faith, Work, and Home Planet, with a central performance area. The Millennium Dome Show, performed 999 times, featured music by Peter Gabriel and an acrobatic cast of 160. Other attractions included a play area, a coin minting press, and the Millennium Star Jewels. Today the Dome forms the exterior of The O2 entertainment complex. Inside, the O2 Arena hosts major events, while the surrounding area includes restaurants, bars, and shops. The Prime Meridian passes the western edge of the Dome, and the nearest London Underground station is North Greenwich on the Jubilee line. The land around the Dome was once derelict and contaminated, but it has been reclaimed as part of a large urban regeneration project. The Dome remains one of the United Kingdom’s most recognisable landmarks.