CN Tower

Toronto's skyline is organised around a single concrete needle. The CN Tower rises 553.3 metres from the old Railway Lands south of Front Street, and for 32 years, from 1975 to 2007, nothing freestanding anywhere on Earth stood taller. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai took that title, and the Canton Tower later overtook it as the world's tallest tower, but the CN Tower is still the tallest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere. It was conceived by the Canadian National railway as a television and radio broadcasting platform for the Toronto area, and as a showcase for Canadian engineering; the design came from John Andrews with the firm Webb Zerafa Menkes Housden.

Construction started on 6 February 1973. The hexagonal core was cast with a slipform that jacked itself upward as the concrete set, and by early 1974 the tower was already the tallest structure in Canada. The antenna was lifted into place in 36 pieces by a Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter nicknamed Olga, a job that took three and a half weeks instead of the six months planned for a crane; Toronto newspapers printed the flight schedule so people could watch. The tower topped out on 2 April 1975 and opened to the public on 26 June 1976. When the railway was privatised in 1995 the tower passed to the federal Canada Lands Company, and its official name became Canada's National Tower, though everyone still calls it the CN Tower.

A visit is a vertical sequence of levels. Elevators in glass-lined shafts climb the outside angles of the core to the main pod, where the Glass Floor, installed in 1994, lets you stand 342 metres above the pavement, and the indoor observation level sits just above at 346 metres. The revolving 360 Restaurant turns slowly above that, and The Top, formerly the SkyPod, is a separate small deck at about 447 metres, just under the antenna. Since 2011 the EdgeWalk has taken harnessed visitors around the open rim of the pod roof at 356 metres, clipped to an overhead rail with no handholds; it closes in winter and in storms or high wind. At night the shaft is lit by colour-changing LEDs that replaced the old white lamps in 2007.

Getting there

The tower stands at 290 Bremner Boulevard in downtown Toronto, between the Rogers Centre and Ripley's Aquarium, about 1.3 km from the centre of the Waterfront Communities–The Island neighbourhood. Union Station is the transit hub: from there it is a short walk west along Bremner Boulevard or through the covered SkyWalk. The closest airport is Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport (YTZ) on the Toronto Islands, 1.8 km away, which handles short-haul flights within Canada and to the United States. Long-haul flights use Toronto Pearson International Airport, linked to Union Station by the UP Express train in about 28 minutes. Paid parking is available at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre south lot and at a lot on Navy Wharf Court.