Big Ben
— — the bell the country sets its watches to.
Not only on a wall.
“At the north end of the Palace of Westminster stands the Elizabeth Tower, 96 metres of Gothic limestone above the Thames. Big Ben is the great bell inside it, cast in 1858 at the Whitechapel foundry and hung the following year. The four clock faces look north, south, east, and west across London. The chimes have stood for the country's hours since 1859, with a five-year quiet for restoration.
Big Ben, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Elizabeth Tower stands at the north end of the Palace of Westminster on the bank of the Thames, in the City of Westminster. The tower rises about 96 metres (316 feet) above street level and was completed in 1859 to a design by Augustus Pugin for Charles Barry's larger Westminster rebuild after the 1834 fire. Big Ben itself is the Great Bell hung inside the tower, cast in 1858 at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The tower was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, having previously been known simply as the Clock Tower.
Augustus Pugin drew the Elizabeth Tower in 1852 as one of his final works, in a Gothic Revival language drawn from English medieval ecclesiastical architecture. The tower is faced in Anston limestone, the same warm yellow stone used across the Palace of Westminster, with cast-iron framing inside. Each of the four clock dials is 7 metres in diameter, made of opal glass set in iron frames, and lit from behind. The minute hands are 4.2 metres long. Pugin died before the tower was finished; the clock first rang on 31 May 1859.
Tours of the Elizabeth Tower run through the year via the UK Parliament and are open to both UK residents and overseas visitors, with about 334 steps to the belfry and no lift. Tickets release in batches and sell out months ahead. From outside, the best photographs of the tower are taken from the south bank of the Thames near County Hall, or from the centre of Westminster Bridge. The chimes can be heard live, on the quarter-hour, from anywhere within roughly half a kilometre.