Article of the Week - Abraj Al-Bait Towers

Abraj Al-Bait Towers
The second tallest building in the world,
the Saudi Arabian landmark also has the
world's largest four-sided clock face, a
record previously held by the Allen
Bradley clock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Abraj Al-Bait Towers, also known as the Mecca Royal Hotel Clock Tower, is a building complex in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The complex holds several world records, including the tallest hotel in the world, the tallest clock tower in the world, the world's largest clock face, and the world's largest building floor area. The complex's hotel tower will become the second tallest building in the world upon its completion in 2011, surpassed only by Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The building complex is meters away from the world's largest mosque and Islam's most sacred site, the Masjid al Haram. The developer and contractor of the complex is the Saudi Binladin Group, the Kingdom's largest construction company.

The hotel tower is topped by a four-faced clock, visible from more than 25 kilometres (16 miles) away, which is the largest clock in the world. The clock will dwarf London's Big Ben, once the largest four-faced clock in the world, as well as the current title holder, the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The dials are more than five times greater in area. The clock's face is also bigger than the current world champion at the Cevahir Mall clock in Istanbul, which has a 36-metre (118-foot) face with 3-metre-high (9.8-foot) digits set in the transparent roof of the shopping complex.

Each of the clock's four faces is 46 metres (151 feet) in diameter and will be illuminated by 2 million LED lights, alongside huge Arabic script reading: “Allah is the Greatest”. Another 21,000 white and green colored lights, fitted at the top of the clock, will flash to signal Islam's five-times daily prayers, and will be visible as far as 29 kilometres (18 miles) away. On special occasions, 16 bands of vertical lights will shoot some 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) up into the sky. The clock's four faces will be covered with 98 million pieces of glass mosaics. The Saudi coat of arms is displayed at the center of each clock behind the dials.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Abraj Al-Bait Towers"