Favorite Fotos: Tower of London

I thought I'd make the next few blogs collections of photos of some of the most famous London landmarks, photos that I wasn't able to use in the original blog posts describing my visits to them. Starting with the Tower of London.

The iconic landmark at the left is the Tower Bridge, which the uninitiated (including myself, at one time) think is part of the Tower where the Crown Jewels are and where the little princes were. When, in fact, it's a much later (Victorian) construction that is called the Tower Bridge simply because of where it's located.

But it certainly is a gorgeous piece of civil engineering, and I found that whenever I was in its vicinity I felt compelled to take picture after picture of it. The one at the right happened to be taken during our visit to the Tower itself, as was the one below, where you can see one of the bridge's lovely Victorian towers looming over the medieval Tower's walls. Separated by 500 or 600 years in their construction, they still do seem to go together rather harmoniously, don't you think?


The Tower complex itself is a fascinating conglomeration of towers, walls, and separate buildings. Here's some of the walls, turrets and battlements, where England's government was situated long ago, contrasted with the modern seat of London's government, across the river.


One of the most compelling features of the place, I thought, was those intriguing slit windows, of which I'm finding that I took many pictures. Here's one of my favorites:


Maybe thinking about being an archer firing on enemies through the slits fired my imagination. Or, perhaps, I just thought they were attractive architectural features. Which they certainly are, I hope you agree.

The oldest structure in the complex, the White Tower, was begun by William the Conqueror himself. Its interior is primarily a museum now, but you can still get glimpses of what life was like there as a royal residence, a long, long, long time ago. It's a lovely building from the outside, too, currently undergoing something of a facelift, which precluded photos showing the entire structure. On the right is a close-up of one of its signature corner towers, and a bit more of one of the walls below:

You can really feel the age of place inside, especially here in the chapel:


And I'll close with this somewhat panoramic view of part of the complex, which gives you a good idea of the ratio of buildings to open space that exists within the Tower walls (and another look at that inescapable bridge):


Tomorrow: St. Paul's.