Advertisement

London’s Big Ben Shows Its 4th Face

Share via
Associated Press

The last of the four clock faces on London’s famed Big Ben tower was revealed Wednesday, after 21 months of obscurity behind scaffolding.

The 320-foot tower and the adjoining houses of Parliament are undergoing a $11.4 million facelift, the first in 50 years. Cleaning and restoration of the blackened neo-Gothic complex began in July, 1981, and is to be finished in 1990.

Big Ben is the 13 1/2-ton bell, cast in 1858, that chimes the hours from behind the clock faces.

Advertisement
Advertisement