London St. Pancras International

St Pancras International is Victorian Gothic at full civic ambition: the soaring red-brick frontage with its pointed arches and pinnacles was designed by George Gilbert Scott as the Midland Grand Hotel in 1868, deliberately fusing ecclesiastical grandeur with railway commerce. Behind it, William Henry Barlow's train shed stretched 74 metres across without a single internal support — the widest single-span roof in the world at the time of its completion. By the 1960s the building was earmarked for demolition, a threat that galvanised British conservation movements in a way directly inspired by the recent destruction of New York's Penn Station. Painstakingly restored and reopened in 2007 as London's Eurostar terminus, it now pairs its cast-iron vaulted interior with one of the city's most celebrated champagne bars running the full length of the departure platform — a fitting send-off for the journey to Paris.