The twin 452m high Petronas Towers. Currently the tallest buildings in the world.

Completed in 1996, the twin, 452m high Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are “officially” the tallest buildings in the world. However, they are still over 100m shorter than the CN Tower in Toronto. When we visited the CN Tower, we commented on the wording of its claim to being “the tallest freestanding structure in the world”. We suggested then that because it is only really a glorified aerial that it didn't qualify as being a building. Well we were correct. We found an excellent web site* dedicated to the world's tallest buildings which explained the official definition of a building as being: “primarily for human habitation with the greatest majority of its height divided into occupiable floors”. The Petronas Towers and the CN Tower are therefore clearly in different categories.

(All measurements are in feet)

Now if that wasn't enough, there seems to be some controversy as to whether the Petronas Towers really deserve the title of The World’s Tallest Buildings. Before they were built, the 443m Sears Tower in Chicago, USA held the title of The World’s Tallest Building. According to the “official” measurements, Petronas beats Sears by 9m. However, if you were to put the two buildings side by side (as shown by this illustration from the Worlds Tallest Buildings web site*), then Sears is clearly significantly taller. The discrepancy arises because the twin spires on top of Petronas count as “architectural features” of the towers and are therefore included in their overall height whereas the antenna on top of Sears does not count because it is functional and not part of the building’s structure. So, despite the fact that the highest floor on Sears is over 60m higher than the highest floor on Petronas, the Petronas’ spires allow it to steal the title to be The World’s Tallest Building(s).

*Sadly, Jeffrey K. Herzer’s excellent web site on The World’s Tallest Buildings (http://www.worldstallest.com/) has since disappeared from the web. If you find it up and running somewhere else please let us know and we’ll update our links.

The view looking East from the KL Tower

We went to see The Petronas Towers on Christmas Day (the day after we arrived) and our first impression was that they weren't as tall as we were expecting! Nevertheless, it was still difficult to get far enough away from them to take their picture. Sadly, unlike most tall buildings, there was no public observation level so we couldn't get an aerial view of the city. It did, however, have a very good 6 storey shopping centre at its base (which, because Malaysia is a Muslim country, was open on Christmas Day). It also had a large public park and garden with performing fountains and a children's play area.

Picture © Memory Lane The 421m high KL Tower

Overlooking the Petronas Towers is the KL Tower. This is a 421m high telecommunications tower which actually appears to be taller than the Petronas Towers from most parts of the city because it is built on a hill. It was the tallest tower in Asia and the 3rd tallest in the world and it also claims to house the highest McDonald's in the World but, as you can't actually buy burgers from it (just drinks and sundaes), this is stretching the definition of what constitutes a McDonald's. This tower had an observation deck, where we finally managed to get a bird's eye view of the city.

Kuala Lumpur's skyline from Merdeka Square In the foreground is the Sultan Abdul Samad building. Behind it you can see the lofty KL Tower as well as the Petronas Towers looking particularly small.

In addition to having the tallest building in the world, Kuala Lumpur also claims to have the tallest flagpole in the world (95m) and the longest mural in the world (painted on the outside walls of the derelict Pudu Jail).