DUBAI: Dubai opened the world’s tallest skyscraper Monday, a glistening concrete, glass and steel pinnacle rising 828 meters (2,717 feet) out of the desert sands.

Blazing fireworks rippled up and down the massive structure after it was officially opened by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashed Al-Maktoum. He renamed the building, previously known as Burj Dubai, Burj Khalifa in honor of United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.

Sheikh Khalifa is also ruler of Abu Dhabi, the emirate which came to Dubai’s help late last year to the tune of $10 billion to bail out troubled property developer Nakheel, a subsidiary of Dubai World. “Today the United Arab Emirates achieves the tallest building ever created by the hand of man ... and this great project deserves to carry the name of a great man. Today I inaugurate Burj Khalifa,” Sheikh Mohammad said.

Parachutists bearing the UAE colors of red, green, black and white then touched down as a giant portrait of Sheikh Khalifa was projected on an outer wall of the structure, which cost $1.5 billion to erect. In the fireworks spectacle that followed blossoms of flames crackled up and down the huge building and out into the Dubai night sky, followed later by lasers sweeping the horizon from the tower’s many levels.

The needle-shaped tower, described by its developer as a “vertical city” as it dwarfs existing skyscrapers, boasts new limits in design and construction.

Emaar Properties, the partly government-owned developer, said the tower has more than 200 floors, only 160 of which will be inhabited, while the remaining floors are for services. Burj Khalifa has a total built-up area of 5.67 million square feet, including 1.85 million square feet of residential space and more than 300,000 square feet of prime office space, Emaar said. This amounts to 1,044 apartments and 49 floors of office space, served by 57 lifts. It also has a hotel carrying the Georgio Armani logo.

Bill Baker, a structural and civil engineer and partner in Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM), which designed the tower, said it has set a new benchmark. “We thought that it would be slightly taller than the existing tallest tower of Taipei 101. (Emaar) kept on asking us to go higher but we didn’t know how high we could go,” he said.

“We were able to tune the building like we tune a music instrument. As we went higher and higher and higher, we discovered that by doing that process ... we were able to reach heights much higher than we ever thought we could.”

The Burj’s developers say they are confident in the safety of the tower. Greg Sang, Emaar’s director of projects, said the Burj has “refuge floors” at 25 to 30 story intervals that are more fire resistant and have separate air supplies in case of emergency. And its reinforced concrete structure, he said, makes it stronger than steel-frame skyscrapers.

“It’s a lot more robust,” he said. “A plane won’t be able to slice through the Burj like it did through the steel columns of the World Trade Center.”