Walking through the Tower of London, I was truly impressed by the sheer amount of history and information that was being put on display. We started the tour by seeing the Crown Jewels, which were a bit underwhelming at first, until I got a look at the whole exhibit, and was in awe of the sheer vastness of the collection. Learning about the royal coronation ceremonies from that was incredibly interesting, and seeing all the different tools and implements of the practice was fascinating to me. The wide collection of different ceremonial maces, crowns, swords, dining ware was amazing to see, and thinking about how well those artifacts were preserved was really cool as an aspiring archaeologist (I do not have any pictures from the exhibit, however, as they did not allow photography there, apparently for security reasons). Walking through the prison towers and cells around the area was fascinating, especially learning about all the different torture implements and famous prisoners that have been kept up in the towers many different cells. I found the prisoner Charles Bailly, a papal agent caught in London attempting to smuggle to multiple members of the ruling class detailing plans for a Spanish invasion of Eastern England, to be particularly interesting, especially, as he made multiple, very neat, inscriptions along the walls of the Tower of London. Wandering the battlements was incredible, as each room contained wildly different histories and exhibits from the ones before it, starting with King Edward I’s bedchambers and telling about such things as the Royal Beasts and WWI.
My favorite exhibit, however, was the White Tower, which I almost missed most of because I was afraid we would run out of time. When I was told about how the higher floors had a dragon statue and a highly impractical combination gun-ax on display, however, I knew I had to go back. And I was not disappointed at all, being greeted not only by those two displays, but with the sights of other oddities like highly decorated weaponry, a look at the vast weapon stores kept below the tower, The Lumley Horseman, a full chapel, and even a small arcade-esque Musket shooting game (that sadly was not working when we were there). The White Tower had so many incredibly interesting finds that pulled at my archaeologist heart, and it is definitely a place that I would like to visit again.
Theatre in London U of A 