The Bank of England's Golden Foundations
Deep beneath the streets of the City of London sits a vault larger than the third tallest building in the city, holding over 400,000 bars of gold.
The Bank of England on Threadneedle Street is an impressive piece of surface architecture, but its most fascinating feature is hidden deep underground. Beneath the bank lies one of the largest gold vaults in the world, holding the UK's gold reserves alongside those of other nations.
The Hidden City
The vault complex consists of two vast floors covering a floor space greater than Tower 42 (one of London's tallest skyscrapers). The sheer weight of the 400,000 gold bars (weighing over 5,000 tonnes and worth over £200 billion) is so immense that the vault had to be built on London clay to stop the building from sinking.
The keys to open the vault doors are three feet long. Interestingly, the bank doesn't actually 'own' all this gold; it acts as a secure custodian for the UK government and around 30 other central banks, providing physical property security on an unimaginable scale.