The project and exhibition were highly contentious and attracted barely half of the 12 million customers its sponsors forecasted, and so were deemed a failure by the press.

The Prime Meridian passes the western edge of the Dome and the nearest London Underground station is North Greenwich on the Jubilee line.

[3] Externally, it appears as a large white marquee with twelve 100-metre-high (330 ft) yellow support towers, one for each month of the year, or each hour of the clock face, representing the role played by Greenwich Mean Time.

[7][8][9] The canopy is 52 metres (170 ft) high in the middle – one metre (3.3 ft) for each week of the year[4] and is made of durable and weather-resistant PTFE-coated glass fibre fabric panels (original plans to use PVC-coated polyester fabric were dropped after protest led by Greenpeace[10]), with each of the 72 segments containing two panels.

The clean-up operation was seen by the then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine as an investment that would add a large area of useful land to the crowded capital.

The Dome project was conceived, originally on a somewhat smaller scale, under John Major's Conservative government, as a Festival of Britain or World's Fair-type showcase to celebrate the third millennium.

The incoming Labour government elected in 1997 under Tony Blair greatly expanded the size, scope and funding of the project,[citation needed] and construction began in June 1997.

Local team Fisher Athletic were at one time interested in moving to the Dome, but they were considered to have too small a fan base to make this feasible.

With music composed by Peter Gabriel and an acrobatic cast of 160, the Millennium Dome Show was performed 999 times over the course of the year.

[21] There was also the McDonald's Our Town Story project in which each Local Education Authority in the UK was invited to perform a show of their devising which characterised their area and its people.

What more cynical monument can there be for this totalitarian cocksure fragile age than a vast temporary plastic bowl, erected from the aggregate contribution of the poor through the National Lottery.

[26] There where numerous changes at management and board level, before and during the exhibition;[27]: 58–59  Jennifer Page was sacked as chief executive of the New Millennium Experience Company just one month after the dome's opening.

[clarification needed] The Timekeepers of the Millennium attraction was acquired by the Chessington World of Adventures theme park in Surrey.

The event, which featured a large funfair, ice rink, and other attractions, culminated in a laser and firework display on New Year's Eve.

[42][43] Over the 2004 Christmas period, part of the main dome was used as a shelter for the homeless and others in need, organised by the charity Crisis after superseding the London Arena, which had previously hosted the event.

A suggestion was also made that the entire Dome be relocated to Swindon to serve as a research centre and extension of the Science Museum; this proposal only came to light when released by The National Archives in 2022.

[47] Meridian Delta is backed by the American billionaire Philip Anschutz, who has interests in oil, railways, and telecommunications, as well as a string of sports-related investments.

This redevelopment was undertaken by the dome's new owners, the Anschutz Entertainment Group, to a design by HOK SVE and Buro Happold.

It cost £600 million, and the resulting venue opened to the public on 24 June 2007, with a concert by rock band Bon Jovi.

Issues related to the Dome damaged the political careers of government ministers Peter Mandelson[50] and John Prescott.