Description
The Tower of London is the old royal fortress on the north bank of the Thames, at the eastern edge of the City: a Norman keep wrapped in two rings of walls and a moat, home to the Crown Jewels, the ravens and the Yeoman Warders.
For almost a thousand years it has been a palace, an arsenal, the Royal Mint, a treasury, a zoo and a prison. Its walls hold some of the most famous stories in English history, and the jewels of a monarchy still crowned with them.
At its heart stands the White Tower, the keep William the Conqueror built around 1078 in a corner of the Roman walls, to overawe a city he did not trust. It is 27 meters high and gives the whole castle its name: from 1240 it was whitewashed.
Inside, St John's Chapel is almost the only room left as the Normans knew it: bare, unadorned stone, as it looked over nine centuries ago. It is the best way to feel how old this place really is.
The Crown Jewels fill the Jewel House in the Waterloo Block: 23,578 gems, St Edward's Crown, placed on the monarch's head at the moment of crowning, the Imperial State Crown and an 800-year-old coronation spoon, one of the very few pieces to survive Cromwell's melting pot.
In the Beauchamp Tower, prisoners of the 16th and 17th centuries carved their marks into the walls: it was opened to visitors in the 19th century just to show them. Along the river, Traitors' Gate is the water-gate Edward I built in the 1270s, with its arrowslits still watching the dock.
Above it, the medieval palace survives in the Wakefield and St Thomas's Towers, the only royal lodgings spared when the rest was pulled down: its restored chambers show how kings lived here in the 13th century.
The tours of the Yeoman Warders are part of the show: they guard the Tower, one of them looks after the ravens as Ravenmaster, and every day they take part in the Ceremony of the Keys, the locking of the Tower.
The first recorded prisoner was also the first to escape. Bishop Ranulf Flambard, locked up in 1100 and hated for his taxes, slid down a rope smuggled in to him inside a cask of wine.
In 1671 Colonel Thomas Blood tied up the keeper of the jewels and got his hands on the crown, scepter and orb. He was caught only because the keeper's son turned up at the wrong moment.
The grim reputation owes a lot to Tudor propagandists and Victorian novelists. Before the 20th century only seven people were executed inside the castle, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey among them, on Tower Green. Most died outside, on Tower Hill.
Don't miss
• The Crown Jewels.
• The White Tower and St John's Chapel.
• The prisoners' inscriptions in the Beauchamp Tower.
• A tour with the Yeoman Warders.
Did you know?
• At least six ravens are always kept here: legend says that if they leave, the kingdom will fall.
• For six centuries the Tower kept a royal zoo, with lions, an elephant and a polar bear that fished in the Thames on a chain.
• People once paid for the zoo with a cat or a dog, to be fed to the lions.
For almost a thousand years it has been a palace, an arsenal, the Royal Mint, a treasury, a zoo and a prison. Its walls hold some of the most famous stories in English history, and the jewels of a monarchy still crowned with them.
At its heart stands the White Tower, the keep William the Conqueror built around 1078 in a corner of the Roman walls, to overawe a city he did not trust. It is 27 meters high and gives the whole castle its name: from 1240 it was whitewashed.
Inside, St John's Chapel is almost the only room left as the Normans knew it: bare, unadorned stone, as it looked over nine centuries ago. It is the best way to feel how old this place really is.
The Crown Jewels fill the Jewel House in the Waterloo Block: 23,578 gems, St Edward's Crown, placed on the monarch's head at the moment of crowning, the Imperial State Crown and an 800-year-old coronation spoon, one of the very few pieces to survive Cromwell's melting pot.
In the Beauchamp Tower, prisoners of the 16th and 17th centuries carved their marks into the walls: it was opened to visitors in the 19th century just to show them. Along the river, Traitors' Gate is the water-gate Edward I built in the 1270s, with its arrowslits still watching the dock.
Above it, the medieval palace survives in the Wakefield and St Thomas's Towers, the only royal lodgings spared when the rest was pulled down: its restored chambers show how kings lived here in the 13th century.
The tours of the Yeoman Warders are part of the show: they guard the Tower, one of them looks after the ravens as Ravenmaster, and every day they take part in the Ceremony of the Keys, the locking of the Tower.
The first recorded prisoner was also the first to escape. Bishop Ranulf Flambard, locked up in 1100 and hated for his taxes, slid down a rope smuggled in to him inside a cask of wine.
In 1671 Colonel Thomas Blood tied up the keeper of the jewels and got his hands on the crown, scepter and orb. He was caught only because the keeper's son turned up at the wrong moment.
The grim reputation owes a lot to Tudor propagandists and Victorian novelists. Before the 20th century only seven people were executed inside the castle, Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey among them, on Tower Green. Most died outside, on Tower Hill.
Don't miss
• The Crown Jewels.
• The White Tower and St John's Chapel.
• The prisoners' inscriptions in the Beauchamp Tower.
• A tour with the Yeoman Warders.
Did you know?
• At least six ravens are always kept here: legend says that if they leave, the kingdom will fall.
• For six centuries the Tower kept a royal zoo, with lions, an elephant and a polar bear that fished in the Thames on a chain.
• People once paid for the zoo with a cat or a dog, to be fed to the lions.