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Tower of London
back to sights listingNowhere else London's history comes to life so vividly as in this minicity of melodramatic towers stuffed to bursting with heraldry and treasure, the intimate details of lords and dukes and princes and sovereigns etched in the walls and quite a few pints of royal blood spilled on the stones. Thank you to the new systems lines are minimal, this enables easy access to all those grisly torture scenes you can see in the film Elizabeth (also here in the Tower). The Tower of London consists of certain exhibitions, you are welcome to visit all of them.
A person was mighty privileged to be beheaded in the peace and seclusion of Tower Green instead of before the mob at Tower Hill. In fact, only seven people were ever important enough -- among them Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, wives two and five, respectively, of Henry VIII's six; Elizabeth I's friend Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex; and the nine-day queen, Lady Jane Grey, aged 17. Tower Green's other function was as a corpse dumping ground when the chapel just got too full. The executioner's block -- with its bathetic forehead-size dent -- and his axe, along with the equally famous rack and the more obscure "scavenger's daughter" (which pressed a body nearly to death), plus assorted thumbscrews, "iron maidens," and so forth, have moved to the Royal Armouries in Leeds, Yorkshire. (Fans of this horrifying niche of heavy metal might also want to pay a call on the London Dungeon attraction, just across the Thames).
In prime position stands the oldest part of the tower and the most conspicuous of its buildings, the White Tower. This central keep was begun in 1078 by William the Conqueror; by the time it was completed, in 1097, it was the tallest building in London, underlining the might of those victorious Normans. Henry III (1207-72) had it whitewashed, which is where the name comes from, then used it as a barracks and as housing for his menagerie, including the first elephant ever seen in the land.
Most of the interior of the White Tower has been much altered over the centuries, but the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist, downstairs from the armories, is a pure example of 11th-century Norman -- very rare, very simple, and very beautiful. The other fortifications and buildings surrounding the White Tower date from the 11th to 19th centuries. Starting from the main entrance, you can't miss the moat. Until the Duke of Wellington had it drained in 1843, this was a stinking, stagnant mush, obstinately resisting all attempts to flush it with water from the Thames. Now there's a little raven graveyard in the grassed-over channel, with touching memorials to some of the old birds (who are not known for their kind natures, by the way, and you risk a savage pecking if you try to befriend them).
Immediately opposite Traitors' Gate is the former Garden Tower, better known since about 1570 as the Bloody Tower. Its name comes from one of the most famous unsolved murders in history, the saga of the "little princes in the Tower." In 1483 the uncrowned boy king Edward V and his brother Richard were left here by their uncle, Richard of Gloucester, after the death of their father, Edward IV. They were never seen again, Gloucester was crowned Richard III, and in 1674 two little skeletons were found under the stairs to the White Tower. The obvious conclusions have always been drawn -- and were, in fact, even before the skeletons were discovered.
Next to the Bloody Tower is the circular Wakefield Tower, which dates from the 13th century and once contained the king's private apartments. It was the scene of another royal murder in 1471, when Henry VI was killed in mid-prayer. Henry founded Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, and they haven't forgotten: every May 21, envoys from both institutions mark the anniversary of his murder by laying white lilies on the site.
The most dazzling and most famous exhibits in the Tower are, of course, the Crown Jewels, housed in the Jewel House, Waterloo Block. You get so close to the fabled gems, you feel you could polish them (if it weren't for the wafers of bulletproof glass). Before you meet them in person, you are given a high-definition-film preview, with scenes from Elizabeth's 1953 coronation.
It's commonplace to call these baubles priceless, but it's impossible not to drop your jaw at the notion of their worth. They were, in fact, stolen once -- by Col. Thomas Blood, in 1671 -- though taken only as far as a nearby wharf. The colonel was given a royal pension instead of a beating, fueling speculation that Charles II, short of ready cash as usual, had had his hand in the escapade somewhere. These days security is as fiendish as you'd expect, with the jewels encased behind secure double doors of incredible thickness.
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Address:
Tower of London
H. M. Tower of London
Tower Hill
London EC3, United Kingdom
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