Officially, the Monument to the Great Fire of London, but more often referred to as simply, the Monument, this tower stands 202 ft tall and 202 ft away from the point where the Great Fire of London began in 1666. It was built to commemorate the fire and placed on the site of the first church to be consumed by the fire which began in a bakery on nearby Pudding Lane.
One of the suggestions for the ornament on the top of the tower was a statue of Charles II, but his comment that he was not the one who started the fire put paid to that idea.The tower was finally topped by a flaming urn.
The column itself is made of Portland stone and has 311 steps in a spiral staircase leading to the viewing platform at the top. As with so many buildings in the city of London, including over two hundred churches, Sir Christopher Wren was involved in the design and construction of the Monument.
When the tower was built, it was designed to double as a workbench for scitentific investigations. Each of the steps is 6 inches high making it possible to measure barometric pressure at regular intervals and the centre core of the tower was to have been be used for gravity and pendulum experiments.
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