World Trade Center / Ground Zero

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. The site of the towers - a gaping wound - became known as 'ground zero'.

Expected to open in 2011, at the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, a World Trade Center Memorial is currently under construction at the site of the former twin towers. The 6 acre (2,4 ha) memorial plaza will be built on top of a large transit hub to be completed in 2013 and marked by a spectacular PATH entrance station by celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

The memorial, dubbed 'Reflecting Absence', will have cascading waterfalls with illuminated reflecting pools at the exact site of the former towers. The names of the 2979 people who died during the attacks that day (including those who died in Pennsylvania and Washington, DC) will be 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.