Twelve unusual towers around the world

Towers are tall buildings in which the height usually exceeds the width. Narrow structures are usually built specifically to take advantage of their height, and they can stand apart from the rest of the building complex or form part of a larger structure. Below are twelve towers, which are very different from all the other towers and because of this are a favorite subject for photography among both professional photographers and tourists.

1. The Ivy Tower, Belgium

The Gruuthuse Museum is located in the Belgian city of Bruges and was built in the 15th century. It has a collection of works of applied art by Bruges masters from the 13th to the 19th century. Gryuthuzu Tower is part of the museum and is better known as the Ivy Tower because most of it is covered with ivy vines. The tower looks especially beautiful in the autumn months, when the ivy leaves play in different colors (yellow, orange, red, brown...).

2. The Guinigi Tower, Italy

The city of Lucca in Tuscany, Italy, is famous for its medieval architecture and untouched city walls. Yet among all the city's exquisite buildings, one building stands out particularly impressively. Torre Guinigi or Guinigi Tower towers over the entire city. At the very top of the 44.5-meter tower you will find a stunning surprise - a garden in which, oddly enough, oaks grow. For centuries, this tiny forest high above the city served as a paradise of peace. The tower was built in the fourteenth century, when the city had more than 250 such towers. Although the number of towers declined dramatically over the centuries, this tower survived. It was built by Guiniji, the most powerful and influential family in the city. The tower was the epitome of the prestige of the family and was the largest in the city, even when an economic boom in the late fourteenth century led to similar towers being built throughout Lucca. The last descendants of the family donated the tower to the city, as well as the palace at its base. The roof garden at the top of the tower is essentially a box of walls filled with earth.
Seven oak trees are thought to have been planted in the 14th or 15th century, but have been transplanted over time. However, those that now grow on the roof are still quite old and, according to old-timers, they grow on the roof for at least several centuries.

3. Kalyazin Tower, Russia

The bell tower of St. Nicholas Cathedral is a neoclassical bell tower, whose height reaches 74.5 meters. It rises above the waters of the Uglich reservoir on the Volga, opposite the old city of Kalyazin. The tented bell tower was built between 1796 and 1800 as part of St. Nicholas Cathedral. When Stalin ordered the construction of the Uglich Reservoir in 1939, the old part of Kalyazin, including several medieval buildings, was flooded with water. The Kalyazin Tower became the main tourist attraction in the east of the Tver region, and the islet was fortified from below. There is also a small dock for boats.

4. The slope tower of Yekaterinburg, Russia

The Yekaterinburg TV Tower is a tall unfinished structure located in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Construction of the tower began in 1983, but was suspended in the early 1990s when its height reached 220 meters. According to the project, the height of the TV tower was to exceed 400 meters.
The building consists of three parts: the body of the tower, its base and metal antennas. In total, the tower has 26 floors (not counting those floors that are at its base). The elevators were never installed. Instead, visitors have to climb the concrete steps of the semi-finished structure. The tower is a local landmark. The tower has a small roll due to a design error that was not noticed during construction. However, it does not pose a threat to the tower and it will not fall in the near future.

5. Ciechanow Tower, Poland

Ciechanow Water Tower, located in Poland, is a hyperboloid structure. In its design, hyperboloid geometry was used, which maximizes the strength of the structure with minimal input of materials. The Tsekhanov Water Tower was built in 1972 by Jerzy Michal Boguslawski. At the moment, there are plans to open a restaurant and observation area, but so far this building remains abandoned.

6. The Pirate Tower, United States

This landmark of the Californian city of Laguna Beach (Laguna Beach), the tower, as if transported in our time from the Middle Ages, is located a little north of Victoria Beach. Built in 1926, it was designed as a private spiral staircase to access the beach from above. To date, this tower is closed, but you can still admire it from the outside, during low tide. To the uninformed beachgoer, the 18-meter-high cliff-like tower appears carved into a cliff. Looking at it for the first time gives the impression that it was carved by waves many centuries ago. The ocean breeze groans through the small holes of the tower, covered with rusty gates, and the huge door at the base of the tower, also covered with rust, opens the gaze of a wooden spiral staircase leading to the rooms above.

7. Sathorn Unique, Thailand

The early 1990s were a heyday for the Thai economy. The country has experienced the most significant leap in development in its history, and hundreds of construction projects have been launched in the capital Bangkok. As the wealth of the country’s citizens increased, the government expected that people would need new, elite apartments to live in. One of these elite buildings was Satorn Unique. Satorn Unique was to be another impressive addition to Bangkok’s ever-growing skyscraper skyline. The magnificent skyscraper was supposed to include more than 600 apartments and many shops. However, construction of the building was abruptly suspended in 1998. And since then, this tall building has stood abandoned and unfinished. Crows circle the upper floors, and rats have settled on the lower floors. Foreign urban speleologists explored the building and returned to Khao San Road with stories of climbing the tops of the building. The verdict: devastation and disorder. The future of Satorn Unique remains unclear, but it is possible that the building will be completed one day. Now, it looms on the horizon of Bangkok along with the rest of the frame structures.

8. Camine Moretti (Cheminée Moretti), France

Moretti’s fireplace is the work of French artist Raymond Moretti and is located in the commune of Courbevoie, near the center of Paris. Moretti fireplace is a system consisting of 672 fiberglass pipes, the diameter of which varies from 2 to 30 cm. The pipes are painted in 19 different colors and their total length is 22 kilometers, and the total weight is 27.5 tons.

9. The Shime Tower, Japan

The former Shime coal mine near Fukuoka, Japan, is an unusual sight even in rural Japan, where abandoned buildings are commonplace. The Shime Coal Mine Tower was built in the midst of World War II, between 1941 and 1943, to help increase the productivity of the coal mine, founded in 1889, and the fact that the Allied forces did not bomb it to the ground is nothing short of a miracle. The mine was in the possession of the Imperial Japanese Navy and is rumored to have been sent to work by Allied prisoners of war, so it is possible that the tower survived for this reason. The tower and the mine beneath it remained in operation until 1964, when the mine was completely closed. The tower is 47.65 meters high and boasts an unusual design. It housed offices and control rooms, right above the coper's immediate mechanism - huge coils of cable, with which loads of coal were lifted from the mine and empty containers and workers were lowered into it, to a depth of 430 meters.

10. The Montreal Tower, Canada

The tower built into the base of the Montreal Olympic Stadium, known as the Montreal Tower, is the tallest sloping tower in the world. Its height is 175 meters. Its tilt angle of 45 degrees is amazing, especially when you consider that the slope of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy is only 5 degrees. At its top, visitors can admire the entire Greater Montreal region and 80 kilometers of the St. Lawrence River Valley. The Michelin Guide honored this breathtaking panorama with the highest rating of three stars. The most common question of visitors to the tower is how can this structure, which is at such a strong angle, stand and withstand the load? The answer to this question lies in the ratio of mass: the mass of the upper part of the tower is 8,000 tons, and it is stably attached to the infrastructure and a strong concrete foundation, extending into the ground for more than ten meters. The weight of this foundation is 145,000 tons and the equivalent of three aircraft carriers. Visitors can reach the top of the Montreal Tower by taking a mesmerizing journey in a glass-finished funicular that seats up to 76 passengers. This funicular is the only funicular in the world operating on a curved structure. It has a hydraulic system that allows the cabin to remain horizontal for two minutes of the trip to the top.

11. Tower of Wind (Tower of Wind), Japan

A rather interesting structure is located in the middle of the ocean, southeast of Tokyo Haneda Airport. Called the “Wind Tower” by locals, it consists of a dazzling white, round base with two white-blue oval structures that look like two sailboats from afar. This structure is actually a ventilation shaft for the Tokyo Bay Aqualine underwater tunnel, which is about 40 meters below the mine itself. The Tokyo Bay Aqualine is the fourth longest underwater tunnel in the world. Its length is 9.6 kilometers, and it stretches from the city of Yokohama to the city of Chiba under Tokyo Bay.
The tunnel took 31 years and $11.2 billion to build. It reduces travel around the bay by 100 kilometers. The beautiful monolith includes an air intake and tunnel exhaust ventilation system, and also marks the middle of the underwater tunnel.

12. PL Peace Tower, Japan

The height of this unusual tower is about 183 meters. It is located at the main building of Kyodan Absolute Liberty in Tondabayashi, Osoka, Japan. The tower is a monument to all souls who died during the war. Inside the tower is a shrine in which all known names of those killed in human conflicts were recorded on microfilms and stored in a gold container. The structure was originally designed using clay by the second founder of the church, and was built in 1970. In the creation of the tower, a new method of “torcretization” was used, consisting in spraying concrete on a wire mesh. Once a year, the Kyodan Church of Absolute Freedom hosts one of the largest fireworks shows in the world. Every year, on July 6, church members celebrate the funeral of the church’s first founder in a ceremony they call the PL Art of Fireworks. Unlike most fireworks shows, which ignite about 5,000 shells, the Art of Fireworks show consists of about 25,000 lit shells. During the finale of the show, about 7,000 shells are fired in unison, illuminating almost everything.