The Tower of London has one of the most recognisable silhouettes in London, having dominated part of the riverside ever since the reign of William the Conqueror in the 11th century. This vast fortress, former prison and secure store for the Crown Jewels is no less imposing now than it was all those years ago, with tales of royals, ravens, myths, murders, treasons and tortures embedded in its historic walls.

Click through this gallery to unearth the strange stories and gruesome secrets of this world-famous London landmark…

This question isn't easily answered, as the Tower has had numerous functions in its near-millennium-long life. From its status as a royal palace and fortress to its days as a prison and place of execution, the site is notorious for its complex and sometimes bloody history. In addition, the Tower of London has been a royal mint, an observatory, an arsenal and a home to the Royal Menagerie, to name just a few. We’ll dig a little deeper into some of these through the rest of the gallery.

There are no fewer than 23 named towers – depending slightly on your definition of 'tower' – across the site. Among them is the Bell Tower (pictured here on the right), which houses the curfew bell that still rings each evening at closing time. In the past, it would have instructed those prisoners permitted to wander the grounds that it was time to return to their cells. Another famous tower is Beauchamp Tower, where over 90 examples of inmate-inscribed graffiti are preserved on the walls.

Fresh from winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and being crowned King of England, William the Conqueror started laying foundations for the Tower of London’s earliest structures around 1075, within the city’s old Roman fortifications. Employing stonemasons from his native Normandy and labourers from across England, William’s vision of a formidable fortress that would help strengthen his rule began to take shape. The castle’s keep and most famous feature, the White Tower (pictured), was completed by 1100.

Over the course of the 13th century, the Tower of London continued to grow as King Henry III (1216-72) and his son Edward I (1272-1307) steadily expanded the site. Between them they added a proper moat and massive defensive walls, transforming the compound into England’s largest and strongest concentric castle (a castle with multiple rings of defences). The lodgings they built comprise what is now called the Medieval Palace (pictured), the heart of the Tower’s royal residential area. Monarchs would use the Tower as a palace for 500 years.

Edward I established the Tower Mint, where most of England’s coins were made until 1810. Manufacturing coins was dangerous and secretive work – Mint staff were exposed to toxic chemicals, segregated from the rest of the castle community and closely monitored. Counterfeiting or tampering with coins was treason, punishable by death. Mint Street (pictured), an area in the outer ward of the Tower, was where many of the factory buildings were based. In his time as warden and master of the Mint, Isaac Newton (yep, the gravity guy) also lived here.

Nowadays, a wharf separates the River Thames from the Tower. But it was once much closer – many of the castle’s buildings used to sit right at the river’s edge, and its waters fed the moat until it was drained in 1843. During the Tower’s time as a prison, religious and political prisoners would arrive by boat at the watergate, better known as Traitors’ Gate (pictured), which is situated below the royal apartment in St Thomas’s Tower (part of the Medieval Palace). As many as four queens of England may have passed through the gate as prisoners in its history.

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Since the 1500s, the Yeoman Warders have been a fixture of the Tower of London. Their nickname, 'the Beefeaters', is thought to date from Tudor times when their positions supposedly enabled them to eat beef from the king’s table. Yeoman Warders are royal guards who live with their families inside the Tower compound. They must have served a minimum of 22 years in the armed forces, reached the rank of warrant officer and received the long service and good conduct medal. Today the Warders lead tours of the Tower and share fascinating insights into its long past.

For 600 years captive animals also lived at the Tower, after being gifted to the monarchy by foreign powers. Known as the Royal Menagerie, it started with the arrival of three 'leopards' (probably lions) at Henry III’s court in 1235. Over time, the collection grew to include other big cats, an elephant and even a polar bear (commemorated by this sculpture), which swam in the Thames on a long rope. The animals sometimes attacked people and weren't well cared for. The menagerie closed in the 1830s and the creatures were moved to the site now known as ZSL London Zoo.

Despite its impressive defences, the Tower of London was breached in 1381 by an unarmed mob during the Peasants’ Revolt. The first great popular rebellion in English history, it was motivated by growing economic discontent and the imposition of an extremely unpopular poll tax. The uprising started in the east of England, and rebels quickly organised and marched on London. When King Richard II left the Tower to meet with some of the rebels (pictured), another group entered the fortress and forced its surrender. The rebellion would fail, but two of the men responsible for the poll tax, the chancellor and the treasurer, were beheaded.

In 1471, during the Wars of the Roses (a conflict between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne), the imprisoned Lancastrian King Henry VI was found dead in Wakefield Tower, part of the 13th-century palace added by Henry III. There are two conflicting accounts of how he lost his life. His enemies claimed that upon hearing his son had been killed in battle, Henry’s heart could not cope with the grief. But another version holds that the king was stabbed while praying in his private chapel (pictured). Which version do you believe?

The sons of Henry's rival, Edward IV, later became the centre of a centuries-old mystery that is still hotly debated today. After Edward died in 1483, his 12-year-old son and heir was taken to the Tower along with his nine-year-old brother, and the pair were never seen again. Remembered today as the enigmatic 'princes in the tower', the dominant opinion among historians is that they were murdered by their usurping uncle, the future Richard III. We’ll never know for sure, but two skeletons matching the boys’ ages were later unearthed at the Tower...

The Tower of London was used to imprison common thieves, enemies of the crown and victims of religious persecution from the 1100s right up to the 1940s. Prisoners of different social ranks had different experiences, ranging from relatively comfortable to utterly miserable. The Tower retains a grisly reputation, but only 22 executions occurred within its walls. Most condemned inmates were taken to the public execution site at Tower Hill, but not all sentences ended in death. Some convicts walked free after paying a ransom or proving they were no longer a threat to national security.

One of the most famous executions carried out on Tower grounds was that of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII. She first came to the Tower in 1533 to prepare for her coronation, but was put to death three years later, accused of adultery and treason. Women were not sent to Tower Hill to be publicly executed – especially not queens of England – so Anne was beheaded in private on Tower Green. A dubious story holds that her disembodied head tried to speak after it had been separated from her neck.

These are the earliest photographs ever taken of Great Britain

Anne Boleyn wasn't the only English queen to lose her life in this manner. Catherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, was executed on Tower Green on similar charges in 1542, after the king learned of her premarital affairs. In 1554, 17-year-old Lady Jane Grey – the so-called 'nine-day queen' – was beheaded after being used as a pawn in a failed Protestant coup against Henry's eldest daughter, the Catholic Mary I. The bodies of Anne, Catherine and Jane remain in the Tower today, buried in the Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula (pictured).

The 16th century was a deadly time for blue-blooded prisoners. Margaret Pole was likely the oldest female prisoner in the Tower’s history and certainly the oldest woman beheaded on Tower Green (pictured as it is today). Her father was the disgraced George Plantagenet, brother of Richard III, who was allegedly killed by being drowned in a barrel of wine. At the age of 67, she too was killed after falling out of favour with Henry VIII. Her executioner was apparently a young and inexperienced axeman, whose inaccurate strikes made for an agonising ordeal.

Anne Boleyn's story goes full circle, because her daughter with Henry VIII was also imprisoned in the Tower but then went on to take the throne. The future Elizabeth I was just a young princess when she arrived in 1554 – possibly through Traitors' Gate but more probably over the drawbridge. Locked away in her mother’s old apartments, Elizabeth was suspected of conspiring against her half-sister Queen Mary I. She was released after two months and placed under house arrest, and would return five years later ahead of her coronation as queen.

Considered a possible heir to the childless Elizabeth I, Arbella Stuart was imprisoned in the Tower by Elizabeth’s successor James I after secretly marrying a fellow claimant to the throne. She's thought to have died there on hunger strike in 1615. Seventy years later James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (pictured), the illegitimate son of King Charles II and his mistress, Lucy Walter, was held in the Bell Tower ahead of his execution on Tower Hill after rebelling against the crown. Like Margaret Pole, Monmouth’s beheading was bungled by an unskilled axeman, and according to the Yeoman Warders his head was later sewn back on so that his portrait could be painted.

It wasn’t just wayward royals that got sent to the Tower. Guy Fawkes was a key figure in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to blow up King James I and the Houses of Parliament. He was held in the Tower before being hanged, drawn and quartered. This sketch imagines Fawkes in the dungeons of the White Tower, held in a tiny cell known as 'Little Ease'. Centuries later, in 1952, infamous London gangsters the Kray twins were held in the Tower overnight – among the last of its prisoners.

Plenty of people – in fact, the Tower of London’s first ever prisoner was also the first to abscond. Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham escaped through a window in the White Tower in 1101 using rope smuggled in a gallon of wine. Alice Tankerville, imprisoned for piracy in 1534, is the only female prisoner known to have escaped. She climbed down from a tower into a boat waiting on the Thames, but was soon caught and executed. This image recreates the moment William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale successfully escaped in 1715, disguised as a woman.

Physical torture is known to have been practiced at the Tower of London on at least 48 prisoners during the 1500s and 1600s. It was most often used on those held for murder or treason; Guy Fawkes is said to have been tortured during questioning while in custody. Equipment like the rack (which stretched people until their joints popped, pictured) and the scavenger’s daughter (a crushing device) were mostly used to extract information, and sometimes even the threat of these painful punishments forced a prisoner to confess.

England’s Crown Jewels have been stored and displayed at the Tower of London for over 300 years. Even now, armed soldiers take it in turns to protect the precious items, many of which are still worn for coronations and other ceremonial purposes. In 1671, shortly after they moved in, Colonel Thomas Blood audaciously attempted to steal the jewels, but was caught red-handed. Today the Crown Jewels are securely guarded at the Tower’s Jewel House (pictured). There are more than 23,000 individual gemstones in the collection. 

Before the Royal Observatory opened in Greenwich in southeast London, it temporarily found a home at the Tower of London. Charles II appointed the mathematician John Flamsteed Britain’s first royal astronomer in 1675. While he waited for the Greenwich site to be built, Flamsteed stayed at the Tower and is thought to have studied the skies from one of the White Tower’s turrets (now known as Flamsteed Tower). Today the Royal Observatory forms part of the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, while astronomer royal remains an official role in the royal household.

A strong and secure fortress, the Tower of London has been used as a storehouse for more than the Crown Jewels in its time. Its chambers have housed armouries, arsenals, explosives and government archives, and highlights from the Royal Armouries collection are displayed in the White Tower to this day. Under Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington and revered constable of the Tower in the 1800s, arms and armour were made, tested and stored within its walls. Purpose-built military barracks were established and the Tower was modified for modern warfare.

Wellington’s improvements to the Tower’s military infrastructure were put to the test in the 20th century, when Britain went to war with Germany not once, but twice. During the First World War new recruits were sworn in (pictured) and garrisoned at the Tower, while 11 spies met their deaths by firing squad within the grounds. In 1941, in the midst of the Second World War, German spy Josef Jakobs became the last prisoner to be executed at the Tower. Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s right-hand man, was also briefly imprisoned that year. The Tower itself sustained bomb damage, with one blast killing a Yeoman Warder.

Drained due to its stagnant waters during the Duke of Wellington’s tenure, the Tower moat has been (mostly) dry ever since. Heavy rains caused the Thames to burst its banks in 1928, flooding the moat once more for what was then the first time in living memory. The moat was used as an allotment during wartime, and in 2014 the First World War's centenary was commemorated with 888,246 ceramic poppies cascading into the moat from the battlements. In summer, the ditch is a haven for insects, awash with colourful flowers and plants.

The ceremonial locking and unlocking of the Tower of London’s gates each day has become known as the Ceremony of the Keys. The ritual began in the mid-14th century, after a furious King Edward III turned up unannounced one night and was able to stroll into the Tower unchallenged. Since then, the gates have been diligently locked every evening and unlocked every morning. For the ceremony, the Chief Yeoman Warder dons their impeccable uniform and attends to the gates with the King's Keys, together with a garrison of soldiers.

The ravens at the Tower of London have been under royal protection since the reign of Charles II. His astronomer John Flamsteed was apparently not a fan of wild ravens, as they blighted his observations. But before the offending birds could be removed, legend has it that Charles learned of a prophecy warning that if the ravens ever left the Tower, its walls would crumble and his kingdom would fall. At least six ravens have been kept there ever since and are cared for by a designated ravenmaster.

Today the Tower of London is one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988, and vast swathes of British history converge across 12 fascinating acres. Visitors should set aside at least three hours to explore. Tickets can be booked online and include the Yeoman Warder tours and access to the Crown Jewels exhibition. After-dark tours, the Gunpowder Plot immersive experience and concerts need to be booked separately.

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