The Tower Bridge connects London's Citadel Hill to Southwark Quarter. It stretches above the Thames and combines elements of a suspension bridge and a raised bridge.

The reason for this is that at the end of the 19th century, the London municipality tried to solve two main problems in a creative way: one was allowing pedestrian and buggy traffic flow, while on the other hand maintaining ship passage entering the harbor near the bridge, also known as “The Pool of London." The public was invited to try come up with a creative solution and out of 50 different proposals the city engineer Horace Jones was chosen.

The bridge has a sophisticated mechanism designed for its diverse functions. There are two main bascules which lift in order to allow river traffic to pass. These parts of the bridges rise to an angle of 86 degrees. The passage of the ships causes no harm to pedestrians, who can continue walking on the special elevated passage designed for this purpose (61 meters). Despite this, the elevated passage was not very popular due to dozens of stairs pedestrians were required to climb in order to reach the crossing. They preferred to wait until the ships passed. The elevated passage, which was abandoned most of the time, became a refuge for prostitutes and thieves, and it was closed in 1910. It reopened in In 1982, this time with an internal exhibition documenting the history of the famous bridge ...
The construction of the bridge lasted 8 years and was built by 432 workers supervised by 5 engineers. The length of the bridge is 244 meters. It is comprised of two identical towers 65 meters high. The weight of each of the bascules that rise to allow river is 1,000 tons. In 1974, with the development of technology, steam engines were replaced by electric motors.

The colors of the bridge (identical to the colors of the flag: blue, red and white) were painted only in 1977, in honor of the 25th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's rule.

Recently, a glass floor at the height of 42 meters was added to the bridge, providing a spectacular view of the waters of the Thames, the roads and pedestrians. The cost of its construction amounted to $1.7 million. The glass panels are 11 meters wide and 8 inches thick, and their weight is approximately half a ton.