Today, the tunnel’s grand entrance hall reopens to the public for the first time in 147 years. The underground event space is part of an engineering museum that celebrates the famous family who built the tunnel—and much of London.
The Thames Tunnel was designed for horses and carriages to travel under the river, though because of financial problems, the approach for wheeled vehicles was never finished. Instead, the tunnel was embraced by pedestrians and became quite the destination in itself, illuminated by gaslights and lined by vendors. Londoners would come here to take an afternoon stroll along the tunnel’s 1,300-foot length, and it was known famously as the eighth wonder of the world.
