Atomium

The Atomium is in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium.

It has nine big round balls, called spheres. Long tubes join the balls together, and people can go inside!

The Atomium stands on the Heysel site in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. It was the main building of Expo 58, the Brussels World's Fair of 1958.

It has nine spheres joined by tubes. The Brussels Times gives its height as 102 meters. Visitors can ride up inside it, see exhibitions in some of the spheres and look out over the city from the top sphere.

The Atomium was designed and built for the Brussels World's Fair of 1958, as the fair's flagship building and emblem. Its managers describe it as a monumental structure halfway between sculpture and architecture, and today as a museum and exhibition center.

The Brussels Times gives its height as 102 meters. Inside, the stainless steel cupolas measure 18 meters across. The main panorama, in the upper sphere, looks out over Brussels, and another viewpoint, in one of the side spheres, looks at the city through the Atomium's own frame.

Everything is made of tiny bits called atoms. They are far too small to see.

The Atomium shows how iron atoms sit together, made giant-sized!

The Atomium's managers say it is shaped like a cube standing on one corner. It shows a tiny crystal of iron, made 165 billion times bigger. There is an atom, shown as a sphere, at each corner of the cube and one in the middle.

Twenty tubes join the spheres, and three large legs, each made of two parts, hold the whole thing up. Some tubes have escalators inside.

The official description: an elementary iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, standing as a cube on its tip, with one atom at each angle, the atoms connected by 20 tubes, and the whole supported by three large bipod braces. The tubes house escalators and sound-and-light displays.

In 1958 only six spheres were open to the public. Four held an exhibition on peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and the top sphere held a 250-seat restaurant designed by the Belgian architect Stanislas Jasinski. Windows were fitted in the top sphere and the lower spheres; the other six spheres have oval skylights instead.

In this photo, the Atomium is lit up at night. Its balls sparkle with little lights, like stars!

This photo was taken on 11 September 2007, after dark. Many small lights sparkle on the steel spheres, and tall lamps glow along the road in front, where cars are parked.

The Atomium was not meant to last beyond 1958. It was almost knocked down in the late 1990s, but from 2004 to 2006 it was renovated, and it reopened on 18 February 2006.

The photograph (11 September 2007, by Kemeter) shows the renovated Atomium from the front, its spheres dotted with small lights, above a row of tall lamp posts and parked cars.

In the renovation of 2004–2006, the whole outer skin was removed, and 1,000 of the original aluminum triangles were auctioned to pay for a new stainless steel shell, chosen to resist corrosion better. After the renovation the building weighed 2,500 tonnes, against 2,400 in 1958. The German designer Ingo Maurer devised its new LED lighting, inside and out.