The Associated Press
LONDON — It’s 202 feet (61 meters) high, has 311 stairs and is known simply as The Monument.
One of London’s simplest but most evocative tourist attractions reopens Monday after an 18-month restoration that cost 4.5 million pounds ($6 million).
The Monument is a memorial to one of the most devastating disasters in London’s history: the 1666 Great Fire that destroyed much of the medieval city.
Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, it’s an elegant Portland stone column topped with a gilded orb. Its height equals the distance from the spot where it stands at the corner of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill to the site of a bakery in Pudding Lane where the fire is thought to have started on Sept. 2, 1666.
Fanned by strong winds, the inferno raged for three days, destroying thousands of wooden houses, hundreds of businesses, 87 churches and St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Diarist John Evelyn described the “miserable and calamitous spectacle” he saw as the city was destroyed.
“God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and cracking and thunder of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storm,” he wrote.
When the flames had died down, architect Wren was put in charge of rebuilding London. As part of the new city he and his friend Robert Hooke designed the classically inspired Monument, a simple Doric column topped with a golden ball. It was completed in 1677.
Wren and Hooke intended the monument to be a venue for experiments in astronomy and other scientific fields, and even built a basement laboratory. But noise and vibrations from traffic in the streets got in the way.
From then on it was a tourist attraction, and the site of at least six suicides, which led to the viewing gallery being fenced in during the 19th century.
Over the last 18 months, the structure has been cleaned and repaired, its “flaming orb” re-gilded with 30,000 leaves of gold. New telescopes have been installed on the viewing gallery, and a camera set up to offer live images streamed to the monument’s Web site for those unable or unwilling to make the climb.
That’s the attraction’s main concession to modernity. There are no high-tech displays, and no elevator. Visitors still have to climb the circular stone staircase to if they want the spectacular views of London from the top.
Those who make the climb can see the higgledy-piggledy medieval street pattern below, and glimpse the spires of post-fire churches and the dome of Wren’s post-fire St. Paul’s Cathedral among the modern office buildings and skyscrapers.
When they get down, visitors are awarded a certificate commemorating their accomplishment.