Terminal cases: The 10 worst travel hubs

By Simon Calder

Terminal: that is the outlook for the building that proved the original concept for the modern airport. The revolutionary design of The Beehive, as Gatwick's 1936 circular terminal soon became known, provided a sleek, beautiful interface between two forms of transport – rail and air. Suddenly, northern France was an effortless couple of hours away from central London. But, in a week when Britain's bravest and biggest air terminal opens for business, the original Gatwick airport is about to lose its aviation connection. The Beehive is being vacated by its present tenant, GB Airways, when easyJet takes over next weekend.

European architectural prizes are a mystery. The Stirling Prize judges who gave Lord Rogers the 2006 award for his Terminal 4 at Madrid airport had presumably never tried to begin or end a journey there; the transfer to the rest of the airport takes almost as long as the flight from London.

At least Heathrow Terminal 4 has an excuse for its awfulness; the youngest of the existing four terminals was always a hopeless compromise. It is in the wrong place, with half the aircraft movements having to cross an active runway. It also proved inadequate for the mish-mash of airlines that have ended up using it: KLM, Kenya Airways, SriLankan and (the main tenant) BA, though only for some of its short-haul and most of its long-haul operations. As a result, an awkward extra arm had to be bolted on, with some extraordinarily long walks – or, if you are late, runs. Heathrow Terminals 1 and 3 are grim, too: both require you to endure a long and rambling retail labyrinth before you get anywhere near a departure gate. But Heathrow Terminal 2, the oldest at the airport, is much more tolerable – the closest to the Tube and bus stations, and with very short walks to most gates. Too bad that it will be the first to be demolished once Terminal 5 is up and running.

Railway terminals can be grim, too. Far too many British branch lines have been manipulated so that they end their journeys at bleak, exposed platforms rather than handsome station buildings. Morecambe in Lancashire, Sheringham in Norfolk and Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales are the antitheses of excellence.

The grim Marseille ferry port cancels out the city's appearance in the top 10 courtesy of its new airport terminal. Users of the former thread through a tangle of dereliction to get from city to ship.

Russia is mostly a land of magnificence, in terms of terminals, but there are exceptions. Vladivostok, which translates as "lord of the east", is the city where the Trans-Siberian railway ends. Yet its station feels more like East Croydon than the gateway to the Orient. The world's worst airport terminal is also in Russia. Sheremetyevo 2 was created for the 1980 Olympics, and using it is always a Herculean task. Its location off the highway to St Petersburg is awkward; the design possesses in-built bottlenecks (always try to be the first off the plane); and officials appear to connive with the seedy characters who make an arrival at best an ordeal, at worst terrifying. By comparison Heathrow, even though it is handling 55 per cent more passengers than it was designed for, looks the epitome of civilisation.