Geograph - photograph every grid square

One runs of out of superlatives when trying to describe this building, a dazzlingly ornate and masterly display of Perpendicular Gothic. The magnum opus of Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, it replaced the previous palace destroyed by fire in 1834, and took from 1840 until the 1860s to build. Barry was inclined to Classicism, Pugin was the arch-Gothicist, but Pevsner comments that the "secret of the undoubted architectural success of the Houses of Parliament lies in this collaboration of two utterly different men and in the union of two utterly different views." The original building material was Anston limestone from Yorkshire. Grade I listed.
The Clock Tower (the one with Big Ben, in the distance) get all the attention, but the Victoria Tower, all 323 feet of it in the foreground, is by far the more impressive. Truly monumental, and no matter how many times I turn the corner of Little College Street to find it looming up in front of me, I am awestruck each and every time. See here for a close-up view: TQ3079 : Detail of Houses of Parliament (1).