Skyscrapers in London
London has around 40 completed buildings of 150 meters or more, a tenth of the New York figure. The city has tall buildings. It does not have a tall skyline, and the reason is written into its planning rules.
How many there are
Counting completed buildings at 150 m and above, London reaches about 40. Hong Kong passes 650 and New York sits above 400, so on the usual city ranking London barely registers. At 100 m the count runs to several hundred, which is why what counts as a skyscraper matters more here than in Manhattan.
Almost all of that total arrived after 2000. Tower 42, finished in 1980, held the City record for 20 years with no neighbor above 120 m. A 2024 survey counted over 200 London towers under construction or consented.
London's ten tallest
| Building | Where | Year | Height | Floors | Scale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Shard | 32 London Bridge Street | 2012 | 310 m | 95 | |
| 22 Bishopsgate | 22 Bishopsgate | 2020 | 278 m | 62 | |
| One Canada Square | Canary Wharf | 1991 | 236 m | 50 | |
| Landmark Pinnacle | Canary Wharf | 2019 | 233 m | 75 | |
| Heron Tower | 110 Bishopsgate | 2011 | 230 m | 46 | |
| The Leadenhall Building, the Cheesegrater | 122 Leadenhall Street | 2014 | 225 m | 48 | |
| The Scalpel, the Scalpel | 52 Lime Street | 2018 | 190 m | 38 | |
| Tower 42 | 25 Old Broad Street | 1980 | 183 m | 42 | |
| 30 St Mary Axe, the Gherkin | 30 St Mary Axe | 2003 | 180 m | 41 | |
| 20 Fenchurch Street, the Walkie-Talkie | 20 Fenchurch Street | 2014 | 160 m | 38 |
The Shard
The Shard at London Bridge is 310 m, and 72 of its 95 floors are habitable. Renzo Piano designed it and it was inaugurated on 5 July 2012, the tallest building in the United Kingdom and in western Europe. Piano drew a spire of glass splinters that do not quite meet at the top, so it has no roof in the usual sense. It stands in Southwark, outside the City of London, over a station four Underground lines already served.
The two clusters
London's tall buildings sit in two groups four miles apart with almost nothing tall between them. The City of London, the square mile of the old Roman settlement, holds one: 22 Bishopsgate, the Leadenhall Building, the Gherkin and the Scalpel, packed into a few hundred meters of medieval street plan. Canary Wharf is the other, built from 1988 on the derelict West India Docks, where One Canada Square was the tallest building in Britain for 19 years and the newer neighbors are mostly residential.
The nicknamed towers
London names its towers after kitchen equipment, and the names stick harder than the addresses. The Gherkin was called that in print by 1999, before anything was built, on the site of the Baltic Exchange, whose hall an IRA bomb wrecked in April 1992.
The Cheesegrater earned its wedge honestly. The Leadenhall Building's north face rises straight while the south face slopes back, out of the protected sight line to St Paul's from Fleet Street. The City's chief planning officer supplied the name, saying he could imagine his wife grating parmesan with the model.
The Walkie-Talkie widens as it rises, which is how it got the name, and its concave south face acted as a mirror. In the summer of 2013 that face focused sunlight onto the street at several times the brightness of direct sun. Pavement readings hit 117 °C, a parked Jaguar's trim melted and its owner was paid £946, and a reporter fried an egg on the road. The papers renamed it the Walkie-Scorchie, and an awning followed in 2014. The Sky Garden, three planted floors with a terrace and bars, opened on top in January 2015.
The Scalpel got its name from the Financial Times, for the angled crown. Next door, 22 Bishopsgate is the tallest in the City and second in the country after the Shard. It replaced the Pinnacle, a twisting 288 m tower nicknamed the Helter Skelter that stalled at seven floors in 2012 and stood as a stump for four years.
Why London is lower than other world cities
The first reason is a set of invisible corridors. The London View Management Framework, the Mayor's planning guidance, designates more than two dozen protected views, ten of them sight lines to St Paul's Cathedral. One runs ten miles from King Henry VIII's Mound in Richmond Park, where a gap in a hedge frames the dome; others start at Alexandra Palace, Parliament Hill and Greenwich Park. A tower that would intrude on one of those wedges loses height or loses consent, which is why the Leadenhall Building is sliced on one side. The practice predates the policy: eight corridors centered on Wren's dome were agreed informally in 1938 and written into policy only in 1989. The Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster have similar protection.
Aviation adds a second ceiling. London City Airport approach paths cross the eastern cluster, so the Civil Aviation Authority has a say on heights and on cranes. In 2017 the developers of 22 Bishopsgate applied to cut the tower to 255 m over crane clearance, then withdrew and built the full height.
The third reason is planning culture. London grants no district the height Manhattan zoning grants in advance. Every tower is negotiated on its own through the borough, often the Mayor and usually Historic England, and it takes years. Consent goes to buildings that can argue their silhouette, which is how the city got a skyline of distinct shapes.
The ones you can go up
The View from the Shard occupies floors 68 to 72, with the open-air deck at 244 m, open since 1 February 2013. Two free decks come close: the Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street, which needs a booked slot, and Horizon 22 on level 58 of 22 Bishopsgate, at 254 m the highest free viewing gallery in Europe. Parliament Hill is the free option from outside, and it frames the City cluster behind St Paul's. For the buildings that outrank all of these, see the tallest building in the world.