The Italian modernist décor and can-do service at this 52-room hotel — not to mention the view of Prague's 100 spires from the rooftop terrace restaurant, Coda — has attracted guests like Morgan Freeman and Heidi Klum.
One of the newest public places, the Triumph Leader Museum, is under Baghdad's clock tower, a samovar-shaped structure that rises in a high spire from parklands near the Hands of Victory Pavilion, where the giant bronze arms modelled on Saddam's own arms stand.
Several years ago, I bought William Golding's The Spire from Priestpopple Books in Hexham (and yes, the shop is almost as pleasing and strange as its name).
In 2008, the artist built the "Spire" from 38 cypress trunks, which he layered into a steeple shape.
The stone spire, from 1230, is one of the oldest in England and contributes to Oxford's tradition as "the city of dreaming spires".
When 25 members of the council's height committee met in Chicago on Friday, they heard the spire argument from the chief architect, David Childs of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and representatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which developed the trade center.
Its broach spire dates from the mid-19th century.
From a distance, La Ville Tour Des Sables (translation: The City Sand Tower) would resemble a 1,400-foot 1,400-foot, indisandnible from the spireundindiscerniblevironment.
The same writer said that the tower rose "Manhattan-wise for 10 storeys through the twentieth century, only to have a diminutive spire, escaped from the fifteenth, push through its top to steal the last laugh".
