Exploring Inner spaces

The streets of London are lined with architectural gems,futuristic towers,quickly homes,historic facades.But behind their door is an inner beauty that few get to see-expect for one weekend a year.On Sept 20 and 21,London holds its annual Open house,when hundreds of the city's most exciting buildings-many usually closed to the public-invite you to step inside.Here are four places worth a peek.Portcullis house built to hold new offices for members of parliament at a cost of $440 million,Portcullis house was the most expensive office block in Britian when it was finished in 2000.Imposing and elegant,it surrouds an airy courtyard,and seamlessly incorporates the ultramodern Westminster Underground station below.The foreign office This Victorian government building in whitehall is a picture of neoclassical grandeur and extravagance.The high-lights include the Grand Staircase with its marble columns and lavish murals,and the magnificent Durbar Court,three generous stories of granite arches and intricate friezes,capped by a glass roof.City Hall completed in 2002,the seat of London government is one of the more striking structures along the Thames.Designed by Foster and Partners,it resembles a giant steel-and-glass egg tilting in the wild.Inside,the spiral staircase at its core seems to float in midair,and the meeting chamber offers breathtaking IMAX-like views of the river.On the roof,solar pannel provide power and the building's green credentials.Crossness engines house Designed by Joseph Bazalgettem19th century creator of the London sewage system,the Crossness Engines house waste water pumping station is a feat of Victorian engineering.Inside is a rare marriage of brute power and beauty,four of the world's largest rotative beam engines,surrounded by ornate castiron work that has been carefully restored to stunning effect.



Magical mystery tour poeple say that John Keat's Ghost haunts his house below Rome's Spanish Steps.And,according to legend,a dragon lurks beneath the columns of Castor and Pollus's temple in the Forum.There are just a few of the tidbits to be found within the new Rome edition of the Ruyi,a series of guidebooks that turn visits to Italian cities into intriguing treasure hunts.Springing from the fertile imagination of Venetian writer Alberto Toso Fei,this game as guide centers on a hunt for the Ruyi of the title,a mythical magical scepter stolen from Kublai Khan by Marco Polo.In the story,the explorer takes the scepter back to Venice-where Toso Fei's first Ryui game is set-before it is donated to the Vatican.During the sack of Rome in 1527,the Pope commissions Florentine goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini to transform the Ruyi's appearance to keep it out of enemy hands.Players use clues to find the scepter,taking in a tour of the city as they search.To make the quest more challenging,each entry in the book has been sliced up and jumbled.The only way to reassemble it- and identify the site it describes-is to use a code sent to you by text.Then another text arrives with a question that can only be answered by visiting the site itself.Send the correct reply,and you get a new code to move on to the next site.The clues can lead to any of 60 landmarks and monuments throughout Rome,ranging from the obvious-the Colosseum-to the more obscure,such as a shrine marking the spot where Joan,the legendary female Pope of the 9th century,is said to have given birth.The game lasts from two to nine hours and can be played alone or in teams.Ultimately,the Ruyi always evades discovery.But the real treasures is in experiencing a fun new twist on sightseeing in the Eternal city.