The view from the Attenborough

As you look out of the windows in the foyers of the Attenborough Tower you are looking in a north westerly direction across the City of Leicester towards the hills of the ancient Charnwood Forest in the distance.

Charnwood is the site of some very old fossils, which you can see in Leicester Museum. In the middle of your view, the City of Leicester dates back to pre-Roman times and in the foreground you can see the University and many other modern buildings and places.

Looking from left to right you can see the King Power stadium, the home of Leicester City Football Club.

In the distance there are the white roofs of industrial estates out by the M1 motorway, while in the foreground is Welford Road cemetery, which was opened in 1849 to cater for the overflowing bodies in the city’s churchyards.

Then, to the right, the tall grey building is The Summit, which is student accommodation, and in front of that is the Welford Road stadium of the Leicester Tigers rugby union club. 

To the right of that are the buildings of the Leicester Royal Infirmary, which opened in 1771, and has 1000 beds and employs over 15,000 members of staff. Then, you can see the campus of De Montfort University, and Leicester prison, which looks like a castle from the front, and the spire of Leicester cathedral.

In the foreground on the right are the University’s College of Life Sciences buildings on Lancaster Road.

Depending on how high up you are in the Tower, the view to the right shows the centre of Leicester, where you can make out the clock on the Town Hall, Lewis’s Tower on Humberstone Gate, and - if you’re on the top floors of the Tower – the space centre and St George’s tower, which is painted blue and has on its side one of the largest pieces of street art in Europe.

The street art, which goes up the side of the building, was done in 2022 and if you look again at the hills of Charnwood in the distance you are looking at an area where there are rocks formed over 500 million years ago - which isn’t bad for a view from one building.