Ryugyong Hotel

Thursday, 23rd February 2006 by

This is the striking (and huge) Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. It's a 330-metre-tall pyramid-shaped building with 3,000 rooms, and was supposed to have 7 revolving restaurants, except they never actually finished it.

Wikipedia says:

newspapers estimated the cost of construction was $750 million - 2% of North Korea's GDP - and it is generally assumed construction came to a halt in 1992 due to lack of funding, acute electricity shortages, and the prevailing famine.

The building itself is complete, however it has no windows, fixtures or fittings - which makes it officially the world's Tallest Unoccupied Building! In fact, it's the tallest building by far in North Korea, the 18th tallest building in the entire world, and if it were ever to be completed, would be the world's tallest hotel. Here's a picture which really gives you a great impression of scale.

Thanks to Keith T, Soren Ragsdale, Josh Weinberg, zmaster and Jon Gaspar.