July 18: Tower of London

The words "Tower of London" naturally make us picture a tower.  But it's really like a walled town.  People lived there and coins were minted there and all sorts of things happened there -- including chopping off of a few heads, but so much more.  I was there five years ago for a short afternoon and didn't get to see nearly all of it, so I wanted to come back.  I did that today and I STILL don't think I've seen all of it, but after devoting a lot of the day I've certainly seen a lot more.

Here are some photos just to give the idea of how big and varied the place is:

People still live in the Tower.  There are roped off areas that obviously have small apartments in them.  I'm guessing they're for the guards.
(Do you see the clothesline in the first one?)

They also had reconstructions of what some of the interiors might have looked like centuries ago:

They had some actors in costume popping up and acting out scenes and getting the crowd involved.  I think it was mainly aimed at the school groups there, but it was kind of fun.   I unexpectedly ended up fairly close to the end of one of the scenes:

The Tower also used to contain the royal collection of exotic animals, brought as gifts by foreign dignitaries.  People used to be allowed to come in and see them, occasionally with unfortunate results.  There are now statues to commemorate this old practice.  I had to look closely to see that the statues were made out of what looked like barbed wire fencing, I suppose to symbolize captivity:

And then, finally, a reference to the previously mentioned chopping-off of heads.  There were actually fairly few executions inside the Tower.  Most of them happened outside the walls, on "Tower Hill", where the tube stop is now.  But some high-profile people were executed inside the tower, including three queens: Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, and Jane Grey.  The exact spots of these executions isn't known, but this sculpture was put in one possible place to commemorate those deaths:

Many famous people executed in or near the tower were buried under the floor of the chapel there, which is still a practicing church.  Their individual graves were never marked, but there's a list inside the chapel.  It includes two saints, Thomas More and John Fisher, so it's an official pilgrimage site.

Finally, the big event: the Crown Jewels.  We weren't allowed to take pictures of them, but here's the building they are in:

They are quite beautiful: many crowns, scepters, orbs, and other ceremonial things, all covered with gold and silver and many, many jewels.  There's also a lot of information about them and where they came from and how they were made and what they're used for.  Plus a video about the details of a coronation ceremony, since many of these things only get taken out of the vault for coronations.

There was also information about the Cullinan Diamond, which was found in South Africa in the early 20th century and is the "largest clear cut diamond in the world".  It was divided into several polished gems.  The largest one of those is in the Sovereign's Sceptre and the second-largest in the Imperial State Crown.  They were quite something to see.

The last thing I had time for was a big exhibit of armor, much of which had belonged to kings.  This one was used by Henry VIII in his younger days:

That was almost all that I'd been hoping to see.  The only thing I missed was an exhibit about the Royal Mint, which for five hundred years was inside the Tower.  I guess I'll have to leave that for another visit....