In the square itself - a square with no name, since the area will continue to be known as Tower Hill - are broad granite benches, beneath which are lights. Stanton and Williams were adamant that they did not want any lamp-posts getting in the way, and developed a system where all the light for the square either floods out horizontally from under the benches, or is incorporated into the architecture of the new buildings. You'd probably never notice the absence of something as commonplace as lamp-posts, but it all helps towards the feel of the place.

It is not just the Tower that the new square reveals in a new light. Looking back up the hill from the river, the whole composition sets off the Edwardian baroque of Sir Edwin Cooper's Port of London Authority building, its tower set nicely right at the top. It gives a new prominence the work of another Sir Edwin - Lutyens - whose vaulted seamen's memorial in Trinity Square Gardens is given new prominence. And - less obviously but just as importantly - it makes use of the new Norman Foster-designed complex of office buildings, Tower Place, immediately to the west. These buildings are anything but shrinking violets, but they contain a smaller, semi-sheltered square of their own which now links through to Stanton Williams'. And all the tourist coaches park out of sight underneath it.

Net result? High quality public space, something that is a real luxury given the enormous land values of the City of London. There always used to be a sense of jostling crowds around the tower, too much road space, not enough elbow room. Now the crowds almost lose themselves in the square. The new buildings, while rejecting any historicist pastiche, are content to be background players. Step back a few yards from the square and the silver-grey pavilions all but dematerialize. This is selfless architecture.

There is only one ingredient missing. Everyone, especially Stanton Williams, agrees it should be done, but it will need a lot more money to achieve. The Duke of Wellington drained the Tower's broad moat in the 1840s because it had become nauseatingly smelly. Today it wouldn't be. We need the water back in the moat. The new square demands it.