"London’s newest tourist attraction was unveiled today - a new glass floor in the upper walkways of Tower Bridge.
The floor enables visitors to view traffic passing over the bridge or ships passing under its raised bascules from a height of 42 metres.
This is the most significant change to the structure of the Grade 1 listed, 120-year-old bridge since the opening of its exhibition centre in 1982.
At 8am today, the Standard was the first newspaper to have a bird’s eye view of the Dutch Clipper Dewalvisch heading up the Thames, followed by a tugboat and a Thames Clipper.
It takes nerve to walk across the toughened glass walkway, which is 11m long, 1.8m wide, and made up of six panels, which are 68mm thick and each weigh approximately 530kg. But the new perspective on London’s river is undeniably spectacular.
The walkway, dubbed “the wow project’ while it was under construction, was evolved in consultation with English Heritage, after an initial plan for a new glass floor between the two walkways was rejected.
The floor exposes the steel lattice work of the bridge itself. Some steel panels were removed to clear the view, with the proviso that they could be restored. The west walkway opens today, with the east walkway due to open on December 1."
