Twin tower footprints hold 2,977 victim names on bronze panels

Visitors from across the United States and other countries came to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum ahead of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Many said they felt compelled to pay their respects, while one visitor said the stop was part of a cruise ship itinerary.

A photograph dated September 1, 2026, showed visitors at the New York City memorial. Other photographs showed a man placing roses there on August 23, a U.S. flag flying at the site on August 25 and a worker cleaning one of the reflecting pools on September 3.

The downtown Manhattan memorial took a decade to complete. Its two dark granite basins sit on the footprints of the original towers, with water cascading from their edges and bronze panels around them inscribed with the names of all 2,977 people who died as a result of four aircraft hijackings.

At the memorial, 15-inch letters made from steel from the twin towers carry a line from The Aeneid: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” The towers fell 29 minutes apart in the attack.

The towers were part of a seven-building World Trade Center commercial complex intended to revitalize lower Manhattan and centralize international trade. They stood for barely three decades, but came to symbolize American dynamism and power for many people.

The memorial has served as a place of remembrance for 15 years and, for some, a place of secular pilgrimage to honor, identify and remember those who died. Visitors differed over whether pilgrimage was the right description for their own trips.

A security guard who has worked at the eight-acre site for a decade said the atmosphere becomes more solemn around this time of year.

Pamela Isaac, 70, said she had worked for many years at a nearby brokerage. She was at home in Queens, watching the news in bed, when the attack appeared on television. “I really didn’t understand what was going on,” she said. “Things were very different after that.”

Isaac said she had not visited the area since. “I didn’t want to come before. I felt the need to come to pay my respects to the people I’d been watching in a CNN documentary,” she said. “It’s sad, because all types passed away here.”

Andrea Cemal, 56, said she was on her way to work in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when news of the attack broke. “I think about how sad I was and how everybody was so moved in my country so far away from here,” she said. “The images of those planes impacting on the building were so terrible. I feel the pain of all those souls.”

“It’s an example of what’s wrong in the world,” Cemal said. Her daughter, a student of international relations, said the memorial showed what wars had become with terrorism folded into the way they were fought. “In the current mixed wars and hybrid wars we see more civilians being lost to violence and that sometimes goes unnoticed,” she said.

Michael Tarney, 78, from Sligo, Ireland, said visiting the memorial was like a pilgrimage for him. He had watched a documentary about the disaster the previous evening.

“They said it created the world for the 21st century,” Tarney said. “It was the biggest event, I suppose somewhat similar to the Titanic in 1912. Shocking and with a very personal touch.”

Tarney also recalled drinking at O’Hara’s on nearby Cedar Street when tower two was still under construction in the early 1970s.

A young woman visiting from Morocco, who declined to give her name, said she had felt the need to pay her respects. “It’s one of the most talked accidents,” she said, “and it’s impacted everyone a lot, especially me as Muslim. It’s so sad for the people who lost their lives, but it really destroyed a lot more than just a building. It was like when you throw a stone in the water.”

Nadia Boggette, from Spain, said she was moved by white carnations placed in victims’ inscriptions on their birthdays. “It’s very lovely,” she said. She described the memorial as “peaceful and sad at the same time”.

Anthony Knecht, from Greenville, South Carolina, said, “The crowd seems silent.” He called the attacks “a very sad, eerie time in history” and said seeing the faces of people who died displayed in the museum was “terrible and shocking” but “also important to see”.

Knecht recalled a roommate telling him that America was being attacked. “I was like, ‘No shit.’ Now we have this memorial,” he said. “It’s 25 years later, but what has changed? This terrible thing happened, but those organizations that paid for it are still there.”

Gina and Steve Hutt, from Dallas, Texas, said it was important to visit. Asked whether the trip was a pilgrimage, Gina Hutt said: “No, that would be the wrong word. You have to pay respects.”

Gina Hutt doubted that the attacks had changed politics. “You can call anyone a zealot if you want to. People say all kinds of things but no one really knows why they did what they did,” she said. “I don’t think it was to do with the administration. George W Bush suffered a lot for it because of his dad.” George H.W. Bush had served as CIA director and later as president.

Sara Salehi said a professor’s brother had died at the site. She also recalled that a family member later died by suicide after being traumatized by watching the attack and its aftermath. Observing sunlight catching droplets of water, Salehi said, “All those people now are like little sparkles in the water.”

Joseph Krings, a film editor from Brooklyn, stopped at the memorial on his way to a Labor Day march. “I don’t come here very often because it’s heavy. It’s a very somber feeling you get when you come here,” he said.

Krings said the visit was not a personal pilgrimage and that he had time to kill. “I’m sure it would be a pilgrimage for some people, but I don’t do pilgrimages of any sort,” he said. “But I think it’s beautiful and I love that it’s here.”

Kosta Athanasellis, visiting from Toronto, said the memorial “holds a certain significance to the city’s identity.” He also said he had heard great things about Greenwich Village.

The memorial “definitely brings a wave of melancholy,” Athanasellis said. “What happened here caused an uproar all over the world.”