London photos: #66 (Monument to the Great Fire of London)

Monument in memory of the Great Fire in London (better known as the Monument) - a fluted column in London. The 202-foot column stands 202 feet from where the fire started on September 2, 1666 (at Thomas Farriner's bakery on Paddington Lane) on the site of St. Margaret's Church (the first burned church). Construction of the monument ended in 1677. The authors are the English architect and mathematician Christopher Wren and naturalist, encyclopedist Robert Hooke. The monument is a column, which is crowned from above by a gilded urn of fire. To the top you can climb the narrow spiral staircase.
It is the tallest isolated stone column in the world. At the base, three sides of the monument have inscriptions in Latin. In the mid-19th century, a suicide prevention grid was added. In 2007-2009, a panoramic camera was installed.