London, England - 23 May 2009 London used to be the greatest port on earth. Now the cranes are silent. Here at the Royal Victoria Docks, they have been left as a reminder of past greatness. The entire Dockland area of East London has been massively re-developed.These cranes are now outside the shiny, modern Excel Conference Centre. A classic white elephant construction project, the Millennium Dome - usually just called the Dome - was originally designed to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the arrival of the third Millenium. It flopped. But it now lives on, somehat more successfully, as a Thames-side entertainment venue on the Greenwich Peninsula of SE London.