Angel of the North

Antony Gormley's Angel of the North has stood on a former colliery site just south of Gateshead since 1998, its 54-metre wingspan — wider than a Boeing 747's — making it one of Britain's largest sculptures at 20 metres tall. Gormley embedded timber from a 200-year-old oak pit prop inside the steel figure, a deliberate reference to the coal-mining history buried beneath the very hill on which it stands. Around 90,000 drivers pass it daily on the A1, giving it a strong claim to being the most-viewed sculpture in England. Up close, visitors stand directly beneath the outstretched wings on an exposed hilltop with open views south across the former coalfields — the scale only becomes apparent when people appear as tiny figures at its base.