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Chunnel voted best of 20th Century

Despite being buried 32m beneath the English Channel the structure that links the UK to France beat the Sydney Opera House, the Panama Canal and the Empire State Building.

Chief Executive of Eurotunnel George Christian Chazot said: "We are not the most beautiful project...we are the most secretive."

Four hundred engineers were asked what they considered to be the greatest achievement in their field, based on usefulness, economic impact, influence and innovations with new technology.

San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, built in 1937, came second, followed by an unusual choice for third - the 41,000 miles of the US Interstate Highway System as the largest public works project in history.

Fourth was the Empire State Building in New York, followed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, built in the late 1920s.

The 1914 Panama Canal - which cost the lives of more than 5,000 workers to construct - came sixth, the Sydney Opera House seventh and the Aswan Dam across the Nile in Egypt came eighth.

Ninth were the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, also in New York, which famously withstood a terrorist attempt to blow them up in 1993.

Hong Kong's recently completed Chek Lap Kok Airport, which was built by moving 347 million cubic metres of material, was the last entry in the top 10.

Relevant Stories

Tunnel vision: the Eurotunnel story (15 Mar 99 | The Company File)
Eurotunnel's first profit (15 Mar 99 | The Company File)
New life for the cities (13 Jan 99 | UK)
Why do we build to celebrate the millennium? (02 Mar 98 | Millennium Dome)

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