Description of the attraction
The National 9/11 Memorial and Museum is located in Manhattan, where in 2001 hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, bringing them down and killing nearly 3,000 people. It is a sad, austere and very beautiful place.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger airliners that were filled with jet fuel for a long-haul flight to California. Two planes crashed into the WTC towers. First, the southern tower, engulfed in flames, collapsed, half an hour later - the northern one. The terrorists sent the third plane to the Pentagon. The fourth was approaching Washington, but its passengers entered into a desperate battle with the hijackers, and the liner crashed in Pennsylvania.
All passengers on these flights were killed, more than a hundred people in the Pentagon, over 2,600 in the collapsed towers. Most of those killed at the WTC were above the point of impact - they were trapped and doomed. About 200 people made a fatal jump from the windows, not wanting to be burned alive. Hundreds of firefighters, policemen and doctors died in the fire and under the rubble. Among the victims were citizens of 90 countries.
In 2003, an international competition was announced for the best design of the memorial. Won the project by architect Michael Arad called "Reflecting Absence" - its implementation began in 2006. The centerpiece of the memorial is two deep pools located exactly on the site of the former twin towers, where colossal waterfalls collapse. The impression is that living jets of water disappear into oblivion. The sound of water and the rustle of white oak trees planted around completely drown out the sounds of the city. On the parapets of the pools, bronze plates are fixed on which the names of all victims of the terrorist attack are inscribed.
The huge glass prism of the entrance to the museum (due to open in September 2013) sparkles next to the pools. A tree that survived the crash grows near it. During the attack, the Chinese pear was badly burned, it had only one living branch left. Now the tree is blooming again.
At the entrance to the museum, the visitor will see two giant tridents - the surviving steel columns of the twin towers. A gentle slope-trail will lead underground, to quiet memorial halls.
The central exhibit of the museum will be a genuine staircase, along which hundreds of victims tried to escape from the fire. On two pieces of steel recovered from the wreckage of the north tower, it will be possible to see the imprints of the crashed planes. From the portraits of almost three thousand dead men, women, children, a "Wall of Faces" is created - from it, those who were destined to shout the last words of love into their mobile phones will look at visitors, laughing.
