Have you ever visited some of the most famous landmarks in the world and stood in awe of their incredible lighting displays?
From the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House we have discovered how many lights these attractions use to create these dazzling displays and we can reveal the cost of lighting up some of the biggest tourist hotspots in the world.
The most expensive tourist attraction in the world to light up is the Las Vegas Strip, with its many casinos and hotels (12,000,000 lights to be more precise) enchanting visitors from across the world, costing a whopping £350 million a year to keep the Las Vegas Strip glowing!
Coming in second is one of the most famous buildings in the New York skyline. The Empire State building, with its 68,000 lights that have 16 million variations of colours, the building lights up every evening for a whole range of organisations and causes and which costs £8.3 million a year.
With some of the most famous billboards in the world advertising here, it is no wonder that Times Square in New York comes in 3rd. It is also home to the lights of Broadway,with some of the most famous theatres in the world here and costing around £7 million a year for these dazzling lights to sparkle!
The home of Her Majesty the Queen, Buckingham Palace is one of the biggest tourist hotspots in the UK. The palace, which has been the home to the monarchy since Queen Victoria’s reign, now houses 40,000 lights within its vast 775 rooms, at a cost of £1.1M a year to keep it lit up!
Edinburgh Castle, once home to some of the most famous monarchs in history, including Mary Queen of Scots, is now owned by the Scottish Ministry of Defence and welcomes over 2.1 million visitors a year. This tourist hotspot is estimated to cost £103,000 a year to light up.
The London Eye, a great spot to take in all the vast sights of London, with around 3.5M tourists visiting this cantilevered observation wheel every year. The wheel is also used as part of the London New Year's Eve celebration displays. The structure has 11,500 lights, which costs £41,000 a year to light up.
Blackpool Tower in Lancashire, opened to the public in 1894 and is one of the UK’s most iconic attractions, and is approximately half the height of the Eiffel Tower, standing at 158 meters. The tower costs around £90,468 a year to light up its 25,000 lights.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris has an incredible 20,000 lights, to create some of the most incredible lighting displays in the world. The tower, originally built in 1887 standing at 324 meters, now also uses green sources of energy, including solar panels and two wind turbines, which had been installed in 2012, reducing the tower's carbon footprint by 30%!
The largest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai was constructed in 2004, and had 347 solar panels incorporated into the original design. By using these more sustainable uses of power, the building saves 3,200 kilowatts of energy every day!
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We looked at a variety of world famous landmarks to discover how many light bulbs each place had. We had a range of data sources for the overall cost of lighting up these landmarks. Some of the light bulb data was omitted due to lack of data.
