ExCeL London

The long building beside you is ExCeL, and it stands on the quay of a dock that once took in cargo from all over the world. When the Royal Docks closed to shipping in 1981, this waterfront was left to empty warehouses and weeds. ExCeL opened here in November 2000. Every November the travel industry comes here. World Travel Market moved to ExCeL in 2002, and today around five thousand exhibitors from more than 180 countries fill the halls for three days of meetings and deals. In the summer of 2012 the same halls held Olympic boxing, judo, fencing, table tennis and weightlifting. But the strangest chapter came in the spring of 2020. On 24 March, with COVID spreading fast, it was announced that ExCeL would become a hospital. Ten days later NHS Nightingale opened, planned for up to 4,000 beds, with 700 soldiers helping with the logistics. Then something happened that nobody had dared to count on. London's ordinary hospitals coped. Over the whole first wave, the biggest of Britain's emergency hospitals treated just 54 patients. It may be the only hospital in history that was a success because it stayed almost empty.