AT A GLANCE
Why go?
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is Shanghai's most instantly recognizable landmark — a 468-meter fusion of futuristic engineering and classical Chinese poetic imagery that has defined the city's skyline since 1994. Rising from the tip of Lujiazui's financial district on the banks of the Huangpu River, its eleven spheres — the largest strung like luminous pearls along three towering columns — were directly inspired by a Tang Dynasty poem about the sound of a pipa being played. Standing on the transparent glass skywalk 259 meters above the city, or watching the Bund's colonial-era facades glow amber from the revolving restaurant as the tower rotates beneath you, this is one of those rare attractions that fulfills every expectation a first-time visitor might carry.↗↗↗
A Poem in Steel and Glass
When Shanghai decided to build a new television tower in the early 1980s, the brief was functional: replace aging broadcast infrastructure and serve the city's rapidly expanding Pudong New Area. What emerged instead became one of the most distinctive structures ever erected in China. The winning design, selected in 1988 from twelve entries, placed eleven spheres of varying sizes along three interlocking concrete-and-steel columns — the two largest measuring 50 meters and 45 meters in diameter respectively. Construction began on 30 July 1991; the tower was topped out in late 1993 and opened to the public on 1 May 1995, with the antenna mast adding the final 118 meters to reach 468 meters total.
