Free international lights festival illuminates London

LONDON, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- UK's largest light festival Lumiere London opens Thursday night, with more than 50 artworks of lights by British and international artists displaying on some of the capital's most iconic buildings.

Supported by Mayor of London, the four-night lights festival will transform the city's streets, buildings and public spaces into an extraordinary and immersive nocturnal art exhibition of light and sound.

Installations feature in areas in London including King's Cross, Leicester Square, Chinatown, Westerminster, Oxford Street and the South Bank.

Visitors can enjoy beaming seesaws, walk through a path filled with thousands of flowers made from light reflectors, or pedal on a bike to light up petals of a rose window which was composed of hundreds of recycled plastic bottles.

The lights show is completely free to attend.

Justine Simons, deputy Mayor of London for Culture and the Creative Industries, said the lights festival shows that London is open. "This is an event for free for all of the Londoners and all of our visitors to enjoy the gorgeous kind of architecture in street of London," she told Xinhua, "And this year there are artists from 14 different countries, 58 different art works. So it's a very international event. It really communicates that we want people to understand that London is open to everyone, for ideas, for talents, for business, for tourism."

Lumiere is a festival of lights which first came to London in 2016, when it attracted 1.3 million people. The festival is produced by art production company and registered charity Artichoke. The first Lumiere produced by Artichoke took place in Durham, northern England, in 2009. Enditem