Liverpool's Tallest Buildings, From the Royal Liver Building to West Tower
A clear ranking of Liverpool's tallest buildings, why the lists disagree, and how the skyline grew from Oriel Chambers in 1864 to West Tower and Princes Dock.
By Jon S · 27 Aug 2026 · 10 min read
Photo: Scouse1980liverpool (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons
If you have looked across the Mersey and wondered which Liverpool building is actually the tallest, the answer is West Tower on Old Hall Street, at 140 metres. This guide gives you the full ranking, explains why published lists so often disagree, and walks through how the skyline got its shape, from a four-storey Victorian office to the towers going up at Princes Dock now.
You can check every building here from the street or the waterfront. Where a tower has a public viewing gallery or an interior worth seeing, the guide says so.
The short version
West Tower is Liverpool's tallest building at 140 metres, across 40 floors. It was finished in 2007 and still holds the record in 2026.
Radio City Tower, formally St John's Beacon, reaches 138 metres, but it is an observation and broadcast tower rather than a floor-by-floor building.
The Lexington at Princes Dock is Liverpool's second-tallest building, at about 112 metres, finished in 2021. Moda calls it 34 storeys; other lists say 35.
Lighthaus, next door, was finished in 2025 at roughly 108 metres and 31 storeys, and opened officially in March 2026.
Liverpool Cathedral's Vestey Tower is 101 metres, the tallest cathedral tower in the world.
The Royal Liver Building, opened in 1911 at about 98 metres, is often called Britain's first skyscraper.
Height figures vary between sources because they measure different things. This guide explains the main methods below.
West Tower, 140 metres, Liverpool's tallest building since 2007. Photo: Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How the ranking is measured
Most lists of Liverpool's tallest buildings mix up different kinds of structure and different ways of measuring them. That is why you will see West Tower quoted at 140 metres everywhere, but The Lexington quoted anywhere from 105 to 113 metres depending on where you look.
A building can have several honest height figures: to the roof, to the top of the architecture, to the tip of a mast, or above sea level. The consolidated list for Liverpool uses architectural height, measured from the main entrance to the architectural top, with antennas and signage left out.
That same approach separates buildings, which have occupied floors for most of their height, from telecommunications and observation towers. On that test, Radio City Tower does not count as a skyscraper even though it is one of the tallest things on the skyline. Liverpool Cathedral sits in its own category too. This guide gives you both a strict building ranking and a wider skyline ranking so you can see why the numbers differ.
Liverpool's five tallest buildings
Rank
Building
Height
Floors
Completed
1
West Tower
140m
40
2007
2
The Lexington
approx. 112m
34 or 35
2021
3
Lighthaus
approx. 108m
31
2025
4
Royal Liver Building
approx. 98m
13
1911
5
Beetham Tower (The Plaza)
approx. 90m
27
2004
These are buildings with occupied floors for most of their height. Alexandra Tower and Unity, both near the waterfront, follow close behind at around 86 to 88 metres.
Liverpool's tallest buildings and landmarks
If you just want to know what dominates the view, the list looks different because it includes towers and a cathedral measured by their own conventions.
Rank
Structure
Height
1
West Tower
140m
2
Radio City Tower
138m
3
The Lexington
approx. 112m
4
Lighthaus
approx. 108m
5
Liverpool Cathedral
101m
Treat this as a picture of the skyline, not a strict architectural ranking. The entries are different types of structure measured in different ways.
The waterfront from the Mersey in 2023. Photo: Scouse1980liverpool, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
1864: Oriel Chambers tests the idea
Oriel Chambers, Water Street, finished in 1864. Photo: Rodhullandemu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Liverpool's tall-building story starts with a block that is only four storeys high. Oriel Chambers stands at 14 and 16 Water Street, a two-minute walk from the Town Hall, and you can look at the front for free any time.
Peter Ellis finished it in 1864. Historic England lists it at Grade I for its early use of an iron frame and large areas of glass, including the projecting glazed oriel windows on the rear elevation that give the building its name. Nikolaus Pevsner called it one of the most remarkable buildings of its time in Europe, and it is often cited as an influence on the early skyscrapers of Chicago, though historians argue about how direct that line really is.
It was not a skyscraper. It showed that offices could be built as a frame wrapped in glass rather than as thick load-bearing walls, decades before Liverpool built anything genuinely tall. There is more on Ellis and Liverpool's other firsts in our guide to Liverpool buildings that changed the world.
1911: the Royal Liver Building changes the Pier Head
The Royal Liver, Cunard and Port of Liverpool buildings at the Pier Head. Photo: Chowells, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The real jump came at the Pier Head. The Royal Liver Building went up between 1908 and 1911 as the head office of the Royal Liver Friendly Society, designed by Walter Aubrey Thomas with a reinforced concrete frame behind granite facing. Historic England lists it at Grade I and singles out that concrete frame as central to the design.
At roughly 98 metres it was extraordinary for Britain at the time, which is why it is often described as the country's first skyscraper. Standing next to a 300-metre tower today you would not call it one, but its scale and its construction method were years ahead of anything else here.
It did not stand alone. The Port of Liverpool Building was finished in 1907 and the Cunard Building followed in 1917, giving the waterfront the group now called the Three Graces. They were built as headquarters for the port, insurance and shipping trades, and that link between the city's money and its river runs through our history of Liverpool and the Pier Head visitor guide.
Then Liverpool stopped building tall for 50 years
This is where Liverpool differs from cities that had a continuous race upward. The Royal Liver Building did not trigger a taller office block every few years. It stayed the dominant structure on the waterfront for decades, and the city put its ambition into other things, including two cathedrals.
1965 to 1969: the Radio City Tower
The Radio City Tower, formally St John's Beacon, 138 metres. Photo: Mike Peel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The next structure to change the skyline was the Radio City Tower, built between 1965 and 1969 as part of the redevelopment around St John's shopping centre and formally named St John's Beacon. James A. Roberts Associates designed it, and Historic England listed it at Grade II in 2020, describing its shape as an expression of the space age.
At 138 metres it towered over everything around it, but its form is nothing like the Liver Building. Instead of stacked floors, it is a slender shaft holding a circular pod with a viewing gallery and broadcast studios near the top. That is why it counts as an observation and communications tower rather than a skyscraper. More than 50 years on, it is still only two metres shorter than West Tower.
Liverpool Cathedral: height without a skyscraper
Liverpool Cathedral is a different story again. King Edward VII laid the foundation stone in 1904, from a design by Giles Gilbert Scott, then 22 years old. Building carried on through two world wars and repeated changes of plan, and the final service marking completion was held in October 1978, attended by Queen Elizabeth II.
The Vestey Tower measures 101 metres from floor to top, the tallest cathedral tower in the world. Because the cathedral sits on St James's Mount, the rooftop viewing platform is around 152 metres above sea level, which is why it can look more commanding from parts of the city than a taller tower down by the river. You can go up the tower on the Tower Experience, and the Liverpool Heritage Trail links it to the Pier Head and the commercial district on foot.
The 2000s: Liverpool builds up again
Nothing higher went up until the redevelopment boom of the early 2000s, when apartment and office schemes started appearing around Old Hall Street. The Beetham Organisation's Plaza tower reached about 90 metres in 2004, and Unity followed at 86 metres in 2007. The decisive project was right next to them.
2007: West Tower takes the record
Construction of West Tower started in 2005. The Beetham Organisation developed it, Aedas designed it, and it was finished in 2007 at 140 metres across 40 above-ground floors. That made it Liverpool's tallest building, and also the tallest habitable building anywhere in the UK outside London, Birmingham and Manchester, a position it still holds.
The gap to Radio City Tower is only two metres, but the designs are opposites. West Tower has usable floors for most of its height, topped by a restaurant level. The Radio City Tower keeps its usable space in a pod on a narrow stalk. West Tower was the first time Liverpool built a conventional modern skyscraper at this scale, and it set up the cluster of tall buildings you now see around Old Hall Street. Almost 20 years later, nothing here has passed it.
2021: The Lexington moves the skyline north
Liverpool's newer towers have gone up around Princes Dock, north of the Pier Head, as part of the Liverpool Waters scheme. The Lexington was completed in September 2021 by Moda, a build-to-rent block with 325 homes designed by Falconer Chester Hall. Moda quotes it at about 112 metres and 34 storeys; Wikipedia and several trade reports say 35.
You will see other figures in older lists, from roughly 105 to 113 metres. That spread is exactly why this guide leans on one consolidated source for buildings rather than stitching numbers together. What matters beyond the exact height is that The Lexington pulled the city's tall-building cluster north into former dockland.
2025: Lighthaus completes next door
The skyline changed again when construction finished on Lighthaus at Princes Dock on 11 November 2025, with the official opening on 6 March 2026. It is a 31-storey build-to-rent tower with 278 homes, plus a residents' lounge, co-working space, gym and a sky lounge.
Consolidated lists put it at around 108 metres, a few floors fewer than The Lexington and about four metres shorter. A future confirmed measurement could still shuffle the order at the top of the residential list. For now the building ranking runs West Tower first, The Lexington second, Lighthaus third.
Why the lists disagree
Mostly because they are not measuring the same thing. Any tall structure can be quoted at its height to the roof, its architectural height, its height to the tip including a mast, or its height above sea level. Radio City Tower is 138 metres, but most of that is an empty shaft. Liverpool Cathedral is 101 metres to the top of its tower, but it is not a tower block. Lighthaus is still carrying an estimated figure rather than a surveyed one.
For that reason this guide does not simply take the biggest number published for each structure. For buildings it uses the consolidated architectural-height ranking. Landmarks and towers are shown separately. Height figures were checked on 27 August 2026.
Tall buildings cost Liverpool its World Heritage status
Liverpool's modern skyline is tied up with the argument over the waterfront. The Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2004, put on the In Danger list in 2012 over the scale of Liverpool Waters, and removed from the list entirely on 21 July 2021 by a vote of 13 to 5. The committee said development on the waterfront and northern docks had caused an irreversible loss of the qualities that made the site special, and pointed to Liverpool Waters and a proposed stadium.
The dispute was less about whether Liverpool should have towers and more about where they go, how big they are, and what they do to historic dock views. That argument still runs, because building is continuing north. For how the docks and neighbourhoods fit together, see our waterfront area guide and the guide to reading Liverpool through its buildings.
Where Liverpool can build tall now
Tall-building proposals are not judged in isolation. Liverpool City Council sets out its expectations through supplementary planning guidance that sits alongside the Local Plan and covers tall buildings and the waterfront in more detail than the Plan itself. A developer has to weigh location, design, heritage, views, neighbouring buildings and public space before a scheme has a realistic chance of approval. The city's wider housing targets are covered in our guide to the Liverpool Local Plan.
What happens to the skyline next
The area to watch is Central Docks, immediately north of Princes Dock. Infrastructure work began in September 2025, a £71 million programme of roads, utilities and public realm across the 26-acre site, along with a five-acre Central Park. Liverpool Waters plans for around 2,350 homes here. The infrastructure and park are due to finish in spring 2028, with housing following after that.
None of that confirms a new tallest building. The published material sets out plots, homes and land uses, not a tower higher than West Tower. Individual schemes still need developers, finance, detailed designs and planning permission. For now, West Tower keeps the record.
See them for yourself
The best single view of the lot is from the Wirral side of the Mersey, or from a Mersey Ferry crossing, where West Tower, The Lexington, Lighthaus and Radio City Tower line up behind the Three Graces. On foot, walk Water Street for Oriel Chambers and the Town Hall, then the Pier Head for the Liver Building, and follow the waterfront walk north towards Princes Dock to see the newest towers up close. For a view from the top, book the Cathedral Tower Experience or check whether the Radio City Tower viewing gallery is open before you go.
