Millennium projects such as a new footbridge linking St Paul's cathedral with Bankside are also intended to draw people to the river.

ECONOMIST: The Thames

The Tate's modern art collection will be moved to its new development at Bankside, on the south bank of the River Thames.

BBC: tate

There is also a permanent exhibition telling the story of the building itself, complete with sets, costumes and reconstructions of what the Bankside area would have looked like in Shakespeare's time.

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Southwark Council has been particularly innovative, encouraging the construction of the new Globe theatre (see article), an extension of the Tate gallery at Bankside and a new market.

ECONOMIST: The Thames

The gallery - which is yet to open - has been created from the former Bankside Power Station and features the work of some of world's greatest artists including Picasso, Matisse, Rothko and Warhol.

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Before going to Aix, Gelb stopped in Basel to meet with the Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, best known for their conversion of the Bankside power station, in London, into the Tate Modern.

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The project is being drawn up by Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architects who transformed the former Bankside power station, which closed in 1981 and lay derelict for more than a decade until work began on creating Tate Modern, which opened in 2000.

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