The O2

Count the yellow masts poking up through the roof. There are twelve, one for each month of the year, or each hour on a clock face. The dome is 365 metres across, one for every day of the year, and 52 metres high at the centre, one for every week. It was built to celebrate the year 2000, and every measurement was meant to say so. It opened on New Year's Eve 1999 as the Millennium Dome, with an exhibition that was supposed to draw twelve million visitors in a year. Just over six million came. It closed after twelve months and became a national joke, a £789 million project nobody knew what to do with. Its most famous visitors that year never bought a ticket. On 7 November 2000 a gang drove a JCB digger through the fence, set off smoke bombs and attacked the glass case holding the Millennium Star, a flawless 203-carat diamond. A speedboat was waiting on the river for the getaway. What they did not know was that the police had been tracking them, had swapped the diamonds for replicas, and were hiding behind a false wall a few metres away. In 2007 the dome reopened as The O2, and it has since become one of the busiest concert venues in the world.