The Tower of London was high on my personal list of must-see places in London, and I am sure glad that I got to go with the class (meaning, I am happy I didn’t have to pay for the £17 ticket myself. Yikes!). The Tower has been a shadowy menace in so much of the literature I have read over the years, and I wanted to be able to match reality to the fiction.
Though the pictures aren't great, this gate would have been passed through by boat (the bottom half of the gate was in the moat, and would have been underwater during low tide) When prisoners were convicted in Westminster (just up the river), they would be taken through the Traitor’s Gate, into the Tower where they would be imprisoned before getting their head chopped off.
When I pictured the Tower in my head, I had always thought of just one tall Tower—some freak conglomeration of Big Ben, the leaning tower of Pisa, and the tower with the eye on top from the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Tolkien was a medieval scholar, after all). But what is known collectively as the Tower is actually a Castle and collection of buildings, within a wall, within another wall. It’s its own little village: there used to be market stalls for the prisoners who were good enough to be let out of their cells, a little green village square, a church, and a gift shop (which I think was added after they stopped using the Rack), among other things. In the very center is the White Tower castle. Too bad it's not a White Castle tower. Ay Dios Mio!
These are the pet ravens that live at the Tower. Charles II heard a legend that if these birds ever left the Tower, his kingdom would fall. So they have been here ever since. Now they live in Raven Hotel, where they have golden name plates and individual rooms.
This view is from one of the rooms where many people were locked up before their own beheading. The view onto the courtyard below, where all the people are congregated, is where three Queens were beheaded as traitors.
This is where Sir Walter Raleigh was locked up for being a pirate. He got the chop, too.
Two other highlights were seeing the Crown Jewels, and looking at the impressive Henry VIII exhibit, which included dozens of suits of armor, jousting sticks, horse regalia, helmets, and swords.
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