Tulip (tower)

30 St Mary Axe (previously known as the Swiss Re Building and informally known as the Gherkin) is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. With 41 floors, it is 180 metres (591 ft) tall and stands on the sites of the former Baltic Exchange and Chamber of Shipping, which were extensively damaged in 1992 in the Baltic Exchange bombing by a device placed by the Provisional IRA in St Mary Axe, a narrow street leading north from Leadenhall Street.After plans to build the 92-storey Millennium Tower were dropped, 30 St Mary Axe was designed by Norman Foster and the Arup Group. It was erected by Skanska; construction started in 2001.The building has become a recognisable landmark of London, and it is one of the city's most widely recognised examples of contemporary architecture. It won the 2003 Emporis Skyscraper Award.

St Augustine Papey was a mediaeval church in the City of London situated just south of London Wall opposite the north end of St. Mary Axe Street. First mentioned as "Sci augustini pappey", it originally belonged to the Priory of Holy Trinity. By 1430, the emoluments had become so small that it was united with All Hallows-on-the-Wall and in 1442 was appropriated as an almshouse for elderly clergy. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was demolished and the site built over. The churchyard was acquired by St Martin Outwich in 1539, and survives to this day on Camomile Street

The Baltic Exchange (incorporated as The Baltic Exchange Limited) is a membership organisation for the maritime industry, and freight market information provider for the trading and settlement of physical and derivative contracts. It was located at 24–28 St Mary Axe, London, until the building was destroyed by a bomb in 1992. The Baltic Exchange moved into a new building at 38 St Mary Axe on 15 May 1995. It is now located at 107 Leadenhall St and has further offices in Europe, across Asia, and in the United States.

The Baltic Exchange was a building located at 24–28 St Mary Axe in the City of London and occupied by Baltic Exchange Ltd, a provider of information on maritime transportation markets. A historic landmark, the Baltic Exchange building was architecturally known for its cathedral-like trading hall and its stained glass war memorial. It was damaged in a bombing in 1992. The site is now occupied by 30 St Mary Axe ("The Gherkin"); the stained glass can be seen at the National Maritime Museum.

100 Leadenhall, nicknamed The Diamond, is a mixed-use development approved for the City of London. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the tower will be the financial district's third-tallest building upon completion. The wedge-shaped building will have a facade of elongated diamond shapes.A spokesperson from St Paul's Cathedral said that the tower would have a "harmful impact" on the protected views of the cathedral, and a statement from the Tower of London expressed concern at the skyscraper's diminution of the "visual dominance" of the historic site. The City of London's planning and transportation committee voted 22–2 in favour of the 100 Leadenhall build in July 2018.The development will include a free public viewing gallery, a restaurant, a bar and shops.

The Baltic Exchange bombing was an attack by the Provisional IRA on the City of London, Britain's financial centre, on 10 April 1992, the day after the General Election which re-elected John Major from the Conservative Party as Prime Minister. The one-ton bomb – concealed in a large white truck and consisting of a fertilizer device wrapped with a detonation cord made from 100 lb (45 kg) of semtex – was the biggest bomb detonated on mainland Britain since World War II. The bombing killed three people, injured 91 others, and severely damaged the Baltic Exchange building and its surroundings.

The London Millennium Tower was one of several ideas for the site of the former Baltic Exchange at 30 St Mary Axe, City of London that had been destroyed beyond repair by a Provisional IRA bomb blast.Designed by Foster & Partners, for then owner Trafalgar House, the plan was for the building to be the tallest in Europe and the sixth tallest in the world at that time, behind the twin Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower) in Chicago, and the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. Its height was planned at 386 metres (1,265 ft), with 92 floors, which means it would have been 39th in the world today, and would be overtaken in Europe by the Federation Tower. A public viewing platform was planned for 1000 ft above ground level. The scheme featured a highly unorthodox floor layout, essentially two asymmetrical ellipses joined at one end. When the plans were first unveiled in 1996, the Guardian newspaper coined the term "erotic gherkin", a name that was quickly taken up by other media and which stuck even after the plan was superseded, eventually becoming 30 St Mary Axe, the name of a different skyscraper that stands on the site today. English Heritage had been one of the largest backers of the project until they withdrew their support, due to Heathrow Airport objecting to the disruption that such a tall building would have on their flight paths. The project was eventually cancelled and the site sold to Swiss Re, which created its headquarters, also designed by Foster & Partners.

Bevis Marks, classified as part of the A1211, is a short street (about 150 m long) in the ward of Aldgate in the City of London. Traffic runs northwest in a one-way direction into Camomile Street, and parallel to Houndsditch which runs southeast one-way.

Bevis Marks Synagogue, officially Qahal Kadosh Sha'ar ha-Shamayim (Hebrew: קָהָל קָדוֹשׁ שַׁעַר הַשָׁמַיִם, "Holy Congregation Gate of Heaven"), is the oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom in continuous use. It is located off Bevis Marks, Aldgate, in the City of London. The synagogue was built in 1701 and is affiliated to London's historic Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community. It is a Grade I listed building. It is the only synagogue in Europe which has held regular services continuously for more than 300 years. It is currently threatened by the development of large office buildings that would destroy its historic setting and block its natural light.

70 St Mary Axe, informally known as the Can of Ham due to its shape, is an office building in the City of London. It was completed in early 2019. With 21 floors above ground, it is 90 metres (295 ft) tall and offers 28,000 square metres (301,400 sq ft) of office space. During its construction, the City of London Corporation decided to pedestrianise the part of St Mary Axe along which the building sits, between Bevis Marks to the south-west and Houndsditch to the north-east.

St Mary Axe was a medieval parish in the City of London whose name survives as that of the street which formerly occupied it. The Church of St Mary Axe was demolished in 1561 and its parish united with that of St Andrew Undershaft, which is situated on the corner of St Mary Axe and Leadenhall Street. The site of the former church is now occupied by Fitzwilliam House, a fact acknowledged by a blue plaque on the building's façade. Nearby parishes include the medieval Great St Helen's (1210) and St Ethelburga (14th century). The street name may derive from a combination of the church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and a neighbouring tavern which prominently displayed a sign with an image of an axe, or simply from the church name itself, which may have come from the axes used by the Worshipful Company of Skinners, who were patrons. The sign of an axe is reported to have been present over the east end of the church.The street St Mary Axe is now most notable for the Baltic Exchange at No. 38, and the "Gherkin" at No. 30, a distinctively shaped skyscraper built on the site of the former buildings of the Baltic Exchange and the UK Chamber of Shipping (destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1992). The street originates at its northern end as a turn off Houndsditch, with traffic flowing one-way southbound, and it originates at its southern end as a turn off Leadenhall Street, with traffic flowing one-way northbound. Both one-way portions of St Mary Axe converge at Bevis Marks, where traffic is forced westward into Camomile Street. Number 70 St Mary Axe appears in several novels by the British author Tom Holt as the address of a firm of sorcerers headed by J. W. Wells. This is itself a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. In the song "My Name Is John Wellington Wells", the lyric renders his address as "Number Seventy, Simmery Axe"; this reflects the fact that some Londoners pronounce the street's name as "S'M'ry Axe" rather than enunciating it fully. The Tom Holt novels and The Sorcerer were written before the current office building at 70 St Mary Axe was constructed.

St Mary Axe was a mediaeval church in the City of London. (The church that remains in the modern-day St Mary Axe is St Andrew Undershaft.) Its full name was St Mary, St Ursula and her 11,000 Virgins, and it was also sometimes referred to as St Mary Pellipar. Its common name (also St Mary [or Marie] at the Axe) derives from the sign of an axe over the east end of the church. The church's patrons were the Skinners' Company.According to John Stow in A Survey of London (1603), the name derived from "the signe of an Axe, over against the East end thereof". However, a document dated to the early reign of King Henry VIII describes a holy relic held in the church; "An axe, one of the two that the eleven thousand Virgins were beheaded with". This refers to the legend that Saint Ursula, when returning to Britain from a pilgrimage to Rome accompanied by eleven thousand handmaidens, had refused to marry a Hunnish chief and was executed along with her whole entourage on the site of modern Cologne, in about 451 AD.It was situated just north of Leadenhall Street on a site now occupied by Fitzwilliam House. First mentioned as St Mary apud Ax, it belonged for a time to the nearby Priory of St Helens. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries it was still extant but in decline, and in 1562 it was offered to Spanish Protestant refugees as a place of worship. Three years later, however, it was unused and in a state of disrepair. Shortly afterwards it was pulled down and its parish was united with that of the neighbouring St Andrew Undershaft.The church gave its name to a street of the same name, which links Leadenhall Street with Camomile Street and Houndsditch. No. 30 was the location of the Baltic Exchange until it was destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1992; the Exchange is now located at No. 38 just to the north of its former address. On the site of the old Baltic Exchange now stands 30 St Mary Axe, a skyscraper known colloquially as the Gherkin because of its distinctive shape.The street of St Mary Axe was also the location of the sorcerer's shop in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Sorcerer, which documents the former pronunciation "Simmery Axe". The church that remains in the modern-day St Mary Axe is St Andrew Undershaft.