The National September 11 Memorial & Museum occupy half of the 16-acre World Trade Center site.
Click on photo to learn about the memorial design
30-foot waterfalls cascade down all sides; 16 pumps power the waterfalls; each Memorial pool holds 600,000 gallons of water; 52,000 gallons of water run over the four sides of both pools per minute.
"Reflecting Absence" is the design name of the 9/11 Memorial by architect Michael Arad and landscape architect Peter Walker. Two reflecting pools, one acre each, are set within the footprints of the Twin Towers.
Hundreds of oak trees line the surrounding plaza.
Time it took to water-jet cut each letter in a name on the Memorial
Unlike any other memorial in the world, the arrangement of names was guided by more than 1,200 requests from victims' families to place individual names next to one another.
2,983 names are inscribed in bronze ringing the pools. These include the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93, as well as the trade center bombing on Feb. 26, 1993.
Visitors have come from all 50 states and more than 179 nations*
*Percentage of nations within each region with citizens who have visited the 9/11 Memorial
The Museum had to be constructed at bedrock to provide meaningful access to the historic remnants of the World Trade Center, which are protected under federal preservation law.
Visitors descend to the main exhibition space alongside the "Survivors' Stairs," used as an escape route by hundreds on 9/11.
The original steel column bases that anchored the Twin Towers are visible.
A portion of the original slurry wall, which withstood the attack on 9/11, was designed to keep the Hudson River out of the site.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum will be the global focal point for preserving the history of 9/11 and educating the public on its continued effects on the world in which we live.
The collection houses more than 14,400 three-dimensional artifacts, including 7,311 pieces of ephemera and 60 steel fragments and vehicles like the first responder vehicles and monumental steel that are already on site.
The In Memoriam exhibition honors the 2,983 victims with biographies and profiles, portraits, spoken remembrances and mementoes contributed by family members.
The Memorial and Museum cost $700 million to build.
$80 Million Annual operating budget for Memorial and Museum
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is a nonprofit that had a successful capital campaign supported through a private-public partnership. More than $450 million has been privately raised.
For construction, $390 million in funding came from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the Empire State Development Corporation.