The View from The Shard

Renzo Piano’s tower ends in glass shards, and the top platform is partly open-air between these panes. From the top you look down on the Tower, Tower Bridge and the whole sweep of the river, on clear days far beyond the city. In the evening the view turns into a sea of lights, so a time slot just before dusk works well. If you’d rather enjoy the view with a drink, the hotel bars further down are an alternative.

Background

The Shard, also referred to as the Shard London Bridge and formerly London Bridge Tower, is a 95-storey mixed-use development supertall pyramid-shaped skyscraper, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of The Shard Quarter development. Standing 309.6 metres (1,016 feet) high, The Shard is the tallest building in the United Kingdom and Western Europe; and the seventh-tallest building in Europe. The Shard replaced Southwark Towers, a 24-storey office block built on the site in 1975. The Shard's construction began in March 2009; it was topped out on 30 March 2012 and inaugurated on 5 July 2012. Practical completion was achieved in November 2012. The tower's privately operated observation deck, The View from The Shard, was opened to the public on 1 February 2013. The glass-clad pyramidal tower has 72 habitable floors, with a viewing gallery and open-air observation deck on the 72nd floor, at a height of 244 metres (801 ft).

From Wikipedia: “The Shard”, licence CC BY-SA 4.0