Cleopatra's Needle
Victoria Embankment, London W2

This pink granite monument, 60 feet high and weighing 186 tons, is older than London itself.

The obelisk was erected in Heliopolis in around 1,475 BC and although its inscriptions celebrate the pharaohs of ancient Eygpt it has nothing to do with Cleopatra. 

The monument was presented to the British in 1819 by Mohammed Ali, Turkish Viceroy in Eygpt.  It was thought that the obelisk was too awkward to transport to Britain but in 1878 it was erected by the Thames, shortly after the Embankment was completed. 

The bronze sphinxes at its base, added in 1882, are not Eygptian, and they were accidentally replaced facing the wrong way after being cleaned in the early years of the 20th century. 

Beneath the obelisk is a Victorian time capsule containing artifacts of the day, including photographs of 12 beauties, newspapers and railway timetables. 

During World War I Cleopatra's Needle was a minor casualty of a Zeppelin air raid, and the damage received to the plinth and one of its sphinxes can still be seen. 

Cleopatra's Needle has a twin, which now stands in New York's Central Park, behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art.