London Bridge vs Tower Bridge
The bridge with two tall Gothic towers and a roadway that lifts is Tower Bridge. London Bridge is the plain, low concrete bridge a little way upriver.[1]
By George Morina. Last checked 24 Oct 2026 against the sources listed at the bottom of this page.
Side by side
| London Bridge | Tower Bridge | |
|---|---|---|
| Today's bridge opened | March 1973[5][1] | 30 June 1894[3] |
| What it is | Three spans of pre-stressed concrete[5] | A bascule bridge: the two halves of the roadway lift like a seesaw. It is not a drawbridge.[2] |
| Look | Low and plain | Neo-Gothic towers, chosen to blend in with the Tower of London next door, at Queen Victoria's request[1] |
| Crossing here since | Roman times, around 47 CE[6] | 1894[3] |
| Looked after by | City Bridge Foundation, a charity that maintains five Thames bridges at no cost to the taxpayer[1][7] | |
How far apart are they?
Just over half a mile (about 1 km). Tower Bridge's own site says it's less than 15 minutes on foot along The Queen's Walk on the south bank.[1] Our two bridges loop follows the river between them.
London Bridge
London Bridge is the older crossing by far. There has been a bridge here, on and off, since the Romans. The medieval stone bridge, lined with houses, stood for more than 600 years, and John Rennie's granite bridge replaced it in 1831.[6][5] Today's bridge was built over the foundations of its predecessor and is about 32 metres wide.[6] The full story is on our history page.
Tower Bridge
By the late 1800s London's population was growing fast, and journeys from East London could take hours because there were so few river crossings. The City of London Corporation needed a bridge downstream of London Bridge that wouldn't block the ships using the river.[4] Over 50 designs were sent in to a public competition; the chosen design, by the City Architect Sir Horace Jones with Sir John Wolfe Barry, came in 1884.[4] The Tower Bridge Act was passed on 14 August 1885, building began in 1886, and the bridge opened on 30 June 1894. On average 432 people worked on it each day.[3]
- The 1885 Act says river traffic has priority, and lifts are free for vessels that need them.[2]
- The machinery ran on steam-powered hydraulics until 1976.[2]
- The bridge was first painted a chocolate brown. It has been red, white and blue since 1977.[2]
- Glass floors were added to the high-level walkways in 2014.[2]
Did the American buyer think he was getting Tower Bridge?
No. Rennie's London Bridge was sold in 1968 to Robert McCulloch, who rebuilt it at Lake Havasu City in Arizona, where it opened in 1971. McCulloch's winning bid was £1.02 million, and each of the bridge's 10,276 outer granite blocks was numbered and shipped to Arizona.[1] The legend has been firmly denied, both by McCulloch and by Ivan Luckin, the member of the City's Common Council who arranged the sale.[1]
Where the sources differ
The Institution of Civil Engineers dates the opening of today's London Bridge to 17 March 1973;[5] Tower Bridge's site gives 16 March.[1] Tower Bridge's site also says London Bridge was the only Thames crossing until Putney Bridge opened in 1729,[1] while London Museum says it was London's only crossing until Westminster Bridge opened in 1750.[6] Putney was then outside London, which may explain the difference.