Canton Tower — observation tower
Image by AndyLeungHK from Pixabay

Canton Tower

  • Elevation604 m
  • 2 min read
  • 23.109° N 113.319° E

Interesting facts

  • From its topping-out in August 2009 until Tokyo Skytree overtook it in 2011, it was the tallest tower in the world.
  • The Bubble Tram on its roof, with 16 cabins circling between about 450 and 462 metres, has been recognised as the highest Ferris wheel in the world.
  • The Sky Drop free-fall ride starts at around 485 metres and plunges 30 metres in under two seconds, a Guinness-recognised height record.
  • The Skywalk staircase through the waist is billed as the highest and longest open-air staircase in the world.
  • The tower weighs about 100,000 tonnes, of which the antenna mast accounts for roughly 1,550 tonnes.
  • The structure contains 112 floors, two of them below ground.
  • Construction began in November 2005, and the tower took less than four years to reach its full height.

Why it is worth it

Canton Tower rises 600 m above Guangzhou, a slender lattice of steel twisted like a wrung-out rope. Its form comes from two ellipses, one at ground level and one at 450 m, rotated against each other; the twist squeezes the structure into a narrow "waist" halfway up, where the lattice becomes dense, and lets it open out again towards the top. Locals nicknamed it the "slim waist". It was designed by the Dutch architects Mark Hemel and Barbara Kuit of Information Based Architecture with the engineers of Arup, who won the international competition in 2004, and it opened in 2010 in time for the Asian Games. The hyperboloid principle goes back to the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov, who patented it in 1899.

It is the second-tallest tower in China and one of the tallest free-standing structures in the world. The main body is 450 m high and the antenna adds another 150; inside are TV and radio facilities, restaurants including a two-storey revolving one, gardens, cinemas and exhibition spaces. At night the whole tower glows: every node of the lattice carries its own LED light, individually controlled, so that colours and animations can run up and down its height, while using only a fraction of the energy normally allowed for facade lighting.

The tower is built to be climbed and looked out from. Through the waist runs the Skywalk, an open-air staircase that starts at 170 m and spirals almost 170 m higher, with glass panels in parts of the floor. The indoor observatory sits about 449 m up, and above it an open roof terrace at 488 m was for a while the highest outdoor observation deck in the world. Around the edge of the roof, sixteen transparent capsules for four to six people travel slowly on a sloping track, taking 20 to 40 minutes to circle the top of the tower, with the city far below.

Getting there

The tower stands in Haizhu District, about 7 km from central Guangzhou; metro and bus stations are built into the underground level at its base. Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport (CAN) is about 32 km away in a straight line, and the smaller Foshan Shadi Airport (FUO) about 26 km.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the People's Republic of China 105The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments in the People's Republic of China 5The Most Beautiful Modern Buildings in the People's Republic of China 6The Most Spectacular Modern Observation Towers 7The Most Spectacular Modern Viewpoints 9The Most Beautiful Buildings in the People's Republic of China 11The Most Spectacular Observation Towers 12The Most Beautiful Modern Squares, Streets and Monuments 15The Most Spectacular Viewpoints 33The Most Beautiful Modern Buildings 50The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Canton Tower, formally Guangzhou TV Astronomical and Sightseeing Tower, is a 600-metre-tall (2,000 ft) multipurpose observation tower in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou, China. The tower was topped out in 2009 and it became operational on 29 September 2010 in time for the 2010 Asian Games. The tower briefly held the title of tallest tower in the world, replacing Toronto's CN Tower, before being surpassed by the Tokyo Skytree. It was the tallest structure in China prior to the topping out of the Shanghai Tower on 3 August 2013, and is now China's second-tallest tower and the fifth-tallest freestanding structure in the world.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

23.10920, 113.31915per Wikidata