No visit to London would be complete without a visit to the iconic Tower of London. Originally built in the 1070s by William the Conquerer, it was the first stone castle in England, and has been expanded and revised numerous times over nine hundred years. Today, it serves largely as a tourist attraction, and as secure storage for the Crown Jewels. We arrived early for our ticketed entrance time of 11am, and wound our way slowly inward following a queue of hundreds of other visitors. The Tower (really, several towers surrounded by concentric defensive walls and a moat, now dry) was decorated for Christmas and thronged with holiday visitors.
with The Shard visible in the distance at right.
The history of the Tower (officially His Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London) is complex and fascinating (and at times, quite bloody); the official website provides a nice summary, as does Wikipedia. We enjoyed a short tour by one of the Yeoman Warders (aka, “Beefeaters”), one of the Tower’s ceremonial guards, who was quite gifted in embellishing the bloodier side of the Tower’s history and in playfully teasing his mostly-American audience. The Warders are retired servicemen (and, recently, servicewomen) from the British Armed Forces; they “must be former warrant officers with at least 22 years of service… and hold the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.” They are provided apartments and thus live within the Tower walls. (I passed one such residence with children’s toys outside.) Officially, they guard the tower and the Crown Jewels; realistically, they offer tours and perform ceremonial functions.
After the tour, we joined an even longer queue to enter the vault and view the Crown Jewels, including the crowns, scepters, and other gold and bejeweled items – many of them centuries old, and several still in use today. Photography was not permitted, but the website provides better photos than I’d ever capture.
We also toured the inside of the White Tower – the main tower – which has been (at times) a royal residence, a zoo for exotic animals, an armory, and a museum exhibiting royal armor. Much of the latter was on display, and has been a tourist attraction for almost 200 years.
The Tower also provides lovely views of Tower Bridge, and of the modern skyscrapers in downtown London. Check out the gallery for more photos inside and outside the Tower of London.
Chilly and tired from our visit, we walked a few blocks and tucked into a pub for lunch and a pint: the pub is aptly named “The Hung, Drawn, and Quartered”, recalling the many executions that once occurred at the Tower of London or at nearby Tower Hill.
David Kotz 