Sky Tower is an Auckland icon, and the tower can be seen from all over the city. Here are a few facts:
1. The tower is a telecommunications and observation tower.
2. At 1076 feet (328 meters) it’s the tallest free-standing building in the Southern Hemisphere.
3. There are two restaurants and a cafe at the top. One of the restaurants is revolving. There are observation decks, and you can also bungee jump off if you want to get down quickly.
4. It took two years and nine months to build the tower.
5. The tower is built of 15,000 cubic meters of special high performance concrete, 2000 tonnes of reinforcing steel and 600 tonnes of structural steel.
6. The foundations go down more than 15 meters and are specially designed in order to spread the force load.
7. If the day is clear you can see the view for around 51 miles (82 kilometers)
Do you like to visit the high spots in order to get a good view? Do you have a good head for heights?
(Sources: Wikipedia and Sky Tower website)
I don’t fancy the idea of bungee jumping off the tower, but the rotating restaurant sounds cool :)
Sophie
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The rotating restaurant is cool, but it’s a bit confusing if you get up to go to the loo. It’s hard to find your table again.
I’d love to eat in a restaurant or café at the top of the tower, but not in the revolving one, because I get sick. :-) Great post – very interesting.
Deb@ http://debioneille.blogspot.com
If you ever come to NZ, definitely try the Sky Tower for views. They’re gorgeous.
Oh wow, that sounds a lot like our Stratosphere tower here in Las Vegas. It rotates around and has a dining area inside it. There’s also some crazy rides at the top of it. I was up in it once and that was enough. The food wasn’t great and I’m scared of heights so I didn’t get close to the glass. lol
The Sky Tower has those clear bits of glass that you can stand on and look down to see the ground. I couldn’t make myself stand on those.
It would be a beautiful place to eat…but I do have a fear of heights.
It must be difficult not liking heights since many of our buildings go up these days rather than sprawl outwards.
I don’t think I have the best head for heights, but I don’t necessarily go out of my way to avoid them. For something as grandiose as the tower, I’d go to the top, for sure. I have to say, though, it looks very nice from the ground, too, as in the picture above. Thank you for sharing the photos. Interesting information. Wow.
Silvia @
SilviaWrites
It is a nice looking tower. I forgot to mention that they light up the tower for special occasions and also set off fireworks from the top. At present the tower is lit up like a poppy to commemorate our ANZAC day for returned servicemen and those who died, which is on Friday.
Gah that just makes my hands sweat with people jumping off. Holy cow. Never been in a revolving restaurant. That’d be interesting.