World Trade Center / WTC Memorial

The two towers were different in height, the first one, built in 1972 being 417 meter and the second one, finished on year later measured 415 meter. The One World Trade Center was the highest building in the world until 1974, when the Sears Tower was built in Chicago. When destroyed, the Twin Towers still ranked in the top 10 of the highest buildings in the world and dominated the skyline of lower Manhattan.

The World Trade center was a project started up in 1960 by David Rockefeller. The towers were sometimes nicknamed David and Nelson, the Rockefeller brothers. The design came from Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth & Sons. The monolithic Twin Towers were never seen as great architecture, but it certainly was a great engineering feat.

The Building never received the attention the Empire State Building gets. But it first became world news when, on friday Feb. 23, 1993 at 12:18, a bomb exploded in the World Trade Center. The explosion, destroying 5 floors in the 110 story building, including the central commando center, trapped about 50,000 people, killed 6 and wounded at least 1000 people. Muslim fundamentalists have been convicted for the bombing.

The second time the WTC became world news was on the tragic day September 11, 2001 when 2 hijacked planes crashed into the twin towers. Not much later, the towers imploded. More than 2800 People died in the cowardly terrorist attack by muslims. The site of the towers - a gaping wound - became known as 'ground zero'.

Plans to build a new WTC were launched shortly after the destruction of the original WTC Tower. Instead of rebuilding the twin towers, it was decided to create a memorial at the site and build five new towers around the memorial. Already in 2006 one of the towers - Seven WTC, a 52 story skyscraper - was completed. The whole complex, including the landmark WTC 1 tower with a symbolic height of 541 meters or 1,776 ft (The US declared its independence from the British in 1776) is expected to be completed in 2013.

A memorial to the victims on the World Trade Center Memorial was unveiled September 11, 2011, at the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The 6 acre (2,4 ha) memorial plaza is built on top of a large transit hub to be completed in 2013. The hub is marked by a spectacular PATH entrance station created by the celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

The memorial, dubbed 'Reflecting Absence', has cascading waterfalls with illuminated reflecting pools at the exact site of the former towers. The names of the 2977 people who died during the attacks that day (including those who died in Pennsylvania and Washington, DC) as well as the victims of the 1993 bombing are inscribed around the edge of the waterfalls. The memorial design by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker was chosen during a competition which attracted more than 5200 submissions.