Thousands of people, mostly children, gathered in the large Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo in April 2011 to build what would be named the world’s tallest Lego tower. Surprisingly, it took quite a bit to capture the title: There are other builders of giant Lego towers out there and São Paulo snatched the title set in Chile the previous year. (The first tower was built in London in 1988 and Toronto, Tokyo, Munich, Moscow, and Sydney have all held the title in the past.)

When completed, the tower which had to be assembled using a crane, was composed of 500,000 individual Lego pieces. The tower stood 102 feet and three inches (31.2 metres) and took four days to build. When the final pieces were put into place, wires had to be attached to the tower to keep it from falling down in the wind.

Lego sent officials from Denmark to monitor the construction of the structure, which was erected in a parking lot behind a big shopping center, according to an article in Aol News. “Brazilian former footballer Cafu was responsible for attaching the last piece of the tower,” CNN reported.

The São Paulo record lasted until the summer of 2014 when an even higher tower measuring 34.76 metres (114 feet) was build in Budapest.

Update: This used to be located outside of the Shopping Centre Norte, but it was torn down in April 2011.