Walk along the Thames in London and you’ll see it-Tower Bridge, the iconic span with its towers and bascules, standing like a sentinel between the City of London and Southwark. It’s not just a bridge. It’s a symbol that has watched over London’s changing identity for over 130 years. For locals, it’s the backdrop to morning runs along the South Bank, the photo op before catching the DLR at Tower Hill, the landmark you point to when explaining where you live to visitors from abroad. For tourists, it’s one of the first things they recognize from postcards. But few stop to think about what it really means to be a Londoner when you’re standing under its arches.
In the late 1800s, London was bursting at the seams. The docks were alive with ships carrying tea from India, cotton from America, and spices from the East. But the growing traffic on the Thames made it impossible for tall-masted vessels to pass through the old London Bridge, which had stood since Roman times. The solution? Build a bridge that could lift. Not just raise a little-lift high enough for steamships to sail through, without shutting down road traffic for hours.
Engineers Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry delivered exactly that. Tower Bridge opened in 1894 with a hydraulic system powered by steam, later upgraded to electricity. The bascules could rise in under a minute. For decades, it lifted nearly a thousand times a year. Today, it still opens around 800 times annually-mostly for tall ships, river taxis, and the occasional tall-masted yacht from the Thames Sailing Club. That’s not just engineering. It’s a living tradition.
London doesn’t just have landmarks-it has stories. Tower Bridge isn’t just a structure; it’s a stage. It’s been lit up in rainbow colors for Pride, draped in Union Jacks for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and turned blood-red during the 2020 pandemic to honor NHS workers. It’s been the backdrop for scenes in Sherlock, James Bond, and Notting Hill. When the London Marathon crosses it every April, runners don’t just see a bridge-they feel the city’s pulse.
Locals know the best spot to photograph it: from the footpath near City Hall, just past the Tate Modern, where the river bends and the bridge frames itself perfectly against the Shard. On a clear autumn evening, the golden light catches the granite and steel, and you can hear the distant chime of Big Ben echoing over the water. It’s not a tourist trap. It’s part of the rhythm of daily life.
Walk down Tower Bridge Road and you’ll find the same fishmongers that have been there since the 1950s, their stalls still selling plaice and mackerel from Billingsgate Market. Just a few streets over, in Bermondsey, you’ll find the original Borough Market, where stallholders still shout prices in the same way they did when Dickens walked these streets. The bridge connects more than two sides of the river-it connects past and present.
For expats new to London, Tower Bridge is often the first real sign that they’re not in another city. It’s not like the Brooklyn Bridge or the Golden Gate. It’s uniquely British: a little grand, a little practical, a little stubborn. It doesn’t try to be flashy. It just works. And that’s the thing Londoners admire most.
If you’re visiting, don’t just pay to go up into the glass walkways (though they’re worth it). Walk across the bridge on foot for free. Watch the bascules rise-check the schedule online at www.towerbridge.org.uk. You’ll see local boat captains wave to each other. You’ll hear the clank of the old machinery, still operating after more than a century. At sunset, sit on the steps near the Tower of London and watch the lights come on. That’s when the bridge becomes something more than steel and stone-it becomes a memory.
Try the Tower Bridge Exhibition on a weekday morning. It’s quiet. You’ll get to see the original steam engines in the engine rooms, still preserved in their brass and wood glory. The guides there? Most are locals who’ve lived in Southwark or Wapping for decades. They’ll tell you how the bridge used to be the busiest crossing in London before the Blackwall Tunnel opened. They’ll mention how, during the Blitz, it survived bombs that destroyed nearby warehouses. They’ll say, with a grin, “It’s still standing because we built it right.”
In a city that’s constantly changing-new skyscrapers rising, the Overground expanding, the Elizabeth Line cutting through the heart of London-Tower Bridge remains unchanged in spirit. It doesn’t need to be modernized. It doesn’t need to be trendy. It just needs to work. And it does.
It’s the bridge you cross when you’re late for work at Canary Wharf. The bridge you walk under on a Sunday afternoon with your kids, pointing out the cranes on the river. The bridge that glows blue on Remembrance Sunday, or sparkles with Christmas lights in December. It’s part of the city’s quiet pride. You don’t have to love it. But if you live here, you can’t ignore it.
When the Thames freezes over-which hasn’t happened since 1963 but still lingers in local folklore-Tower Bridge becomes a ghostly monument, a silent witness to a London that once was. And when the tide comes back in, it rises again, not just as a crossing, but as a promise: London endures.
No, they’re two different bridges. London Bridge is the plain, modern concrete span that carries traffic between the City and Southwark. Tower Bridge is the ornate, bascule bridge with towers and lifting sections, located about half a mile east. Many tourists confuse them because of the name, but locals know the difference. If you’re taking a photo with the iconic Victorian towers, you’re at Tower Bridge-not London Bridge.
Yes. The original steam-powered hydraulic system is preserved in the Engine Rooms of the Tower Bridge Exhibition. You can see the massive boilers, pistons, and levers that once lifted the bascules. The engines were replaced with electric systems in 1976, but the originals were kept as a working museum. They’re still operational during demonstrations.
Tower Bridge opens around 800 times a year, mostly for commercial vessels, river tour boats, and tall ships. The schedule is posted online, and you can sign up for email alerts. Most lifts happen during weekdays, especially between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. It rarely opens at night unless there’s a special event like the Tall Ships Festival.
It depends. If you’re just passing through, you can cross the bridge for free and get great views from the sidewalks. But if you want to understand the engineering, history, and see the city from 140 feet up with panoramic glass floors, the exhibition is worth the £12.50 entry. Locals often take visiting family there. It’s one of the few London attractions that actually teaches you something.
Spring and early autumn are ideal. The weather’s mild, the river’s calm, and the crowds are thinner than in summer. Avoid August-Londoners are away on holiday, but tourists flood in. If you want to see the bridge lit up, go in December for the Christmas lights or during the London Festival of Architecture in June. And if you’re lucky, catch the annual Tower Bridge Festival in September, when local artists, musicians, and food vendors take over the surrounding streets.
There’s no plan to replace it. It’s too much a part of London’s soul. Instead, it’s being gently preserved. Solar panels now power its lighting. Digital systems monitor its movements. But the bascules still lift the same way. The same bolts, the same gears, the same pride.
For those who live here, Tower Bridge isn’t just a landmark. It’s a reminder that London doesn’t need to erase its past to move forward. It just needs to keep lifting-just like it always has.
