Cities: Skylines - Unique Buildings and Monuments (2024)

When players check their population milestones in Cities: Skylines, they'll see three other tabs in the same menu. The first is for unique buildings that have special requirements, and the second is for even more unique buildings called monuments.

Monuments are very expensive, and each one requires players to unlock and build six unique buildings. Players must also reach the last milestone, Megalopolis, to unlock monument construction. However, these monuments are worth all the time and effort it takes to build them, because each one breaks the game in its own way. This Cities: Skylines guide will explain how to earn the unique buildings for each of the five monuments that come with the base game, and what happens when players build them.

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Unique Building Basics

Before discussing the monuments, players should know a few things about unique buildings. First, each unique building belongs to a specific tier, and these tiers unlock at different population milestones. If a city hasn't reached the right milestone, then players can't construct unique buildings from that tier even if they've unlocked them.

Second, once a unique building unlocks, it stays unlocked forever for that copy of the game. In every future game, players can build an unlocked unique building as soon as they have the population and the money to spare. Even if players unlock a unique building and then load an earlier save, deleting everything they did, the building stays unlocked.

Players can also unlock unique buildings by playing a game with infinite money on or by downloading a save game that meets the building's requirements. If they then switch off their mods and load a regular game, they can still get the monument achievements. So while some requirements can sound hard to get or like they'd destroy the city, Cities: Skylines doesn't care if players "cheat" to get them.

There are also unique buildings that don't unlock monuments. Two of them come with the base game, 12 of them are available when players activate the free European style mod, and several more come with various expansions. These unique buildings still have requirements, but players won't get access to a monument as a reward for meeting them.

The last thing players should know is what unique buildings do. Regardless of their shape or description, all unique buildings are entertainment venues that attract both local visitors and tourists. They can also boost land value, but unlike parks they often generate noise pollution. Unique buildings are also very expensive, both to build and to maintain. Park buildings do all the same things while taking up less space and costing much less, and so the only reasons to build these objects are to decorate the map and to qualify for a monument.

The Space Elevator

The Space Elevator requires the Expo Center, the Grand Mall, the Opera House, the Stadium, the Statue of Wealth, and the Transport Tower. It costs 1,500,000 to build and 16,000 to maintain.

• The Expo Center requires a total tourist count of 2,000. Players should eventually reach this number without trouble by building parks and other entertainment buildings (including unique buildings), which they should be doing anyway to bring up the land value so zoned buildings can level up.
• The Grand Mall unlocks when players build an airport. The airport doesn't even need a connection to the rest of the city, and players don't need to keep it. It just needs to exist at some point.
• The Opera House needs a city to extract 3,000 units of any natural resources. Players can do this by creating an industrial district and giving it a specialty, although they may want to focus on renewable resources like fertile soil or forests so they don't run dry before hitting the milestone.
• The Stadium requirement is the production of 1,000 units of goods. Generic industry districts produce goods, so this building is even easier to unlock than the Opera House.
• The Statue of Wealth will unlock when players have a total of 500,000 in the bank. Players can quickly earn this by leaving the game running in the background while the city is stable and has a good budget surplus.
• The Transport Tower wants players to reach 1,000 weekly passengers for the public transportation system. This includes every branch of public transport, including ferries, buses, metros, and trains, and it counts both residents and tourists. So long as players keep expanding the number of bus lines and metro stops as the city grows, they shouldn't have trouble reaching this target by the time they hit the Megalopolis milestone.

Overall, the Space Elevator is the easiest monument to unlock since every building it needs will unlock as players expand normally. However, the downside is that the Space Elevator is the least impressive of the five monuments in the base game. All it does is bring in a lot of tourists, between 300-500 per week. This can give the city a big boost to tourist income, but tourist income is only significant if players have the right DLCs and build their cities around tourism.

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The Hadron Collider

The Hadron Collider needs the Colossal Order Offices, the Aquarium, the Posh Mall, the Grand Library, the Statue of Shopping, and the Theater of Wonders. It costs 800,000 to build and 9,600 to maintain.

• The Colossal Order Offices, aside from being a nod to the developer, is a building that needs weekly education expenses to be at 20,000 or higher for 10 weeks straight. Players should have no problem hitting this target before the Megalopolis milestone, at least as long as they keep up with the city's education needs. It also helps to activate the Education Boost policy since it increases the education budget by 25 percent.
• The Aquarium is another education goal: 5,000 children enrolled in elementary schools all at once. The best way to manage this is to build a large residential neighborhood while residential demand is high. This will bring in a lot of new citizens, and they'll all have children at around the same time. Just be sure to have enough elementary schools to handle the sudden influx of students (not to mention high schools and eventually crematoriums).
• The Posh Mall requires players to set every property tax rate to 4 percent and keep it there for 20 weeks. Even a well-run city will lose money with taxes that low, so players should wait until they have a large amount of money in the bank if they want to avoid going into debt. Players may also want to save before dropping the tax rate and reload once they earn the building.
• The Grand Library wants players to build seven universities and keep them running for 10 weeks. Most cities don't need that many universities, and they're expensive to build and maintain, so players should destroy any extras they have after unlocking the Grand Library.
• The Statue of Shopping unlocks when players have a negative bank balance. This one is easier to get early, since players won't have a lot of money in the first place. Simply lower the tax rates to get a negative weekly balance and wait. Once the statue is available, move the rates back up or reload if needed.
• The Theater of Wonders is probably the easiest building on this list to get. Simply build 3 elementary schools, 3 high schools, and 3 universities. Seven universities may be too much for a city, but players will definitely need at least three before the Megalopolis milestone.

The Hadron Collider is easily worth the expense and effort, because it boosts the city's education capacity to 1 million for each level. Not only that, it ignores the usual age requirements for getting an elementary and high school education. And if that's not enough, it can educate citizens practically overnight without any need to commute.

What's more, the highly educated populace will quickly start to upgrade the buildings they live and work in, including buildings that couldn't otherwise upgrade thanks to land value or service access. A city with a Collider has no need for other education facilities, so players can turn them off, demolish them, or simply cut the education budget to 50 percent.

The Fusion Power Plant

The Fusion Power Plant's buildings are the Tax Office, the Observatory, the Fountain of Life and Death, the Science Center, the MAM Modern Art Museum, and the Plaza of the Dead. It costs 1,000,000 to build and 8,000 to maintain.

• The Tax Office is simple to unlock. All players have to do is build a water treatment plant, at least three water pumping stations, and generate 1,000 megawatts of energy. The third requirement is the last one most players will reach, but two nuclear power plants will generate more than enough power.
• The Observatory has the unusual requirement of needing 1,000 abandoned buildings in the city for 5 weeks straight. Still, this one is easy to get once a city is big enough. Players should simply destroy or disconnect every water pump and water tower in the city, and the population will abandon it in no time. Just remember to save before doing so.
• The Fountain of Life and Death unlocks when a single citizen is born in the city and eventually dies of old age. Citizens in Cities: Skylines live for around 6 years, so players should get this building early on.
• The Science Center is very similar to the fountain: 5,000 citizens must live and die over the course of a single game. Build a large city and this requirement will take care of itself.
• The MAM Modern Art Museum wants a city where 50 percent of the population is highly educated (university graduates). Players can reach this number by constructing plenty of education buildings and activating the Education Boost policy.
• The Plaza of the Dead unlocks when players fill 3 cemeteries. This can happen even after players start building crematoriums, so just build 3 cemeteries and don't empty them until after the Plaza unlocks.

The Fusion Power Plant is very straightforward: it generates 16,000 megawatts, which is far more than enough to power a large city. In fact, players can destroy every other power plant (aside from incinerators, which have a different job), cut electricity funding to 50 percent, and still never worry about electricity again.

The Eden Project

To build the Eden Project, players must unlock the Business Park, the Cathedral of Plenitude, the Friendly Neighborhood Park, the Official Park, the Servicing Services Offices, and the Statue of Industry. The Eden Project costs 850,000 to build and 6,400 to maintain.

• The Business Park may be one of the hardest unique buildings to unlock. Its requirement is to build 20,000 squares of buildings on commercial zones. Note that it's not enough to have 20,000 squares zoned for commercial use, a city has to have working buildings covering 20,000 squares to qualify. Players may want to stick with low-density commercial zones to get enough buildings to qualify, or they may want to find and apply a mod that permanently sets all zone demands to max.
• The Cathedral of Plenitude will unlock when players build 30 different types of city service buildings. For instance, a city with 3 elementary schools, 2 high schools, and 1 university has 3 types of education service buildings, not 6. Players should keep in mind that every kind of water and power building counts for this list, and building one of each should make it easy to unlock the Cathedral.
• The Friendly Neighborhood Park requires 10,000 squares of residential zone buildings. This should be much easier to reach than the commercial zone target since cities have more residential zones than other zones.
• The Official Park wants 10,000 squares of office zone. This is high, but doable, especially if players avoid building regular industry zones.
• The Servicing Services Offices needs 300 city service buildings on the map. Unlike the Cathedral, duplicates count, so choose something cheap that can go anywhere like the water tower and keep building them until the SSO unlocks.
• The Statue of Industry asks for 10,000 squares of industry zone. Note that specialized industrial zones count for this, but office zones don't.

The reward for building the city up so much is the Eden Project, which boosts the land value of every square meter in the city to the maximum amount. Between the Eden Project and the Hadron Collider, buildings in the city should level up almost instantly.

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As an added bonus, the Eden Project also reduces pollution levels. This is enough to cut water treatment plants to zero emissions, but industrial zones, polluting power plants, and incinerators will still produce some ground pollution.

The Medical Center

To get the Medical Center, players must first build the High Interest Tower, the Court House, the Lazaret Plaza, the Oppression Office, the Mall of Moderation, and the Sea-and-Sky Scraper. Building the Center costs 650,000 and another 14,400 to maintain.

• The High Interest Tower requires players to take out at least 2,000 in loans. All three loans are bigger than 2,000, so take any of them to unlock this building.
• The Court House unlocks after players have a crime rate of over 50 percent for 5 weeks straight. Cutting the police budget may not be enough, so players should turn off or demolish every police station and wait for the crime rate to go up. If the city is big enough, it should reach the 50 percent mark quickly and stay there long enough to qualify. However, players will want to reload after this one.
• The Lazaret Plaza only unlocks when the average health drops below 20 percent and stays there for 3 weeks. To get the number low enough, players should place sewage pipes upstream from the city's water pumps and reduce the healthcare budget to 50 percent. With luck, the city's health should drop low enough for long enough before everyone dies or leaves. Once again, don't do this without saving.
• The Oppression Office asks for an unemployment rate of 50 percent for 5 weeks. The easiest way to do this is to use the de-zone tool, set it to the marquee or large brush mode, and then remove half the industrial, commercial, and office zones from the map. Do this quickly to reach the 50 percent unemployment goal, and then slowly de-zone more workplaces as the weeks go by so that unemployment stays high even as citizens start leaving. Afterwards, reload the game.
• The Mall of Moderation has the requirement of an average garbage piling of at least 25. This means that garbage throughout the city piles up without enough garbage trucks to remove it. Garbage is always an issue in most cities, so players should only have to drop the garbage budget to 50 percent and wait. There's no time minimum on this one, so once garbage piles high enough players will unlock the Mall and can reload their save.
• The Sea-and-Sky Scraper is the easiest building on this list to unlock. Just build a regular harbor and a cargo harbor on the same map and that's it.

The Medical Center is another simple one: it has a patient capacity of 1,000, but more importantly it boosts the city's health so much that no citizen will ever get sick. Players may want to cut the healthcare budget because of this, but they shouldn't. Healthcare also covers death care and body removals, and while the Medical Center is good it can't stop citizens from dying. Instead, players should turn off or demolish hospitals and clinics.

Cities: Skylines is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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