![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Tower of London
Jul. 9th, 2012 08:15 pmYesterday--among other things--I went to the Tower of London.
I had been avoiding it. I said to myself, "It's all historic--but I don't really care that much about kings--and it's so expensive!"
It was worth it.
I got there about half an hour after they opened; it was raining, and there was already a formidable line at the ticket office. I sighed and, like a good Londoner, joined the queue. (My mother has recently asked me to bring her something small and purely British as a souvenir. I am not sure what "purely British" means. So, since then, I have been thinking of wholly inappropriate things that fit that criteria: an Oystercard! a vaguely distant expression! a queue!)
At any rate, I got inside. There's one whole side of the Tower complex where you can go up (steep, rain-slick) steps to the walls, and walk along the top of the wall. The wall's sprinkled with towers, so you're always stepping down into tower rooms--those narrow spiral stone staircases--to see educational displays and then up more steps and out again into the rain. (It is not wheelchair accessible in the slightest.) Every time the weather has changed again: misty, drizzling, damp, raining.
...the one problem is that at the end there's a display of crowns, which everyone goes through at a very slow shuffle (becoming a further queue), and in addition to not caring that much about kings I don't care that much about crowns. So I ducked out of that fairly quickly. But the rest of the wall-walk--that was good, all historical details and some artifacts and some replicas, like of historical weapons that you can heft. And the occasional bit of a period room. Most of the rooms are done up with projectors and screens or tiny speakers or other technological aids to Viewing History, which I have mixed feelings about, but certainly they added detail.
After that, I was right by the Crown Jewels, but the only reason I would've gone in would've been motivated by the BBC Sherlock, and really that is not motivation enough when crowds and I are concerned. Anyway, I knew I wanted to see the White Tower, and I knew that the Tower of London as a whole would only get busier as it moved on toward lunchtime.
And the White Tower was--well. They had displays of armor and weaponry, which were quite nice; they had disorientingly Victorian white-painted sash(?) windows set into the big forbidding stone arches; they had further projectors and sound clips, of which I grew progressively more weary. And then, just as I was saying to myself, "Well, this has been interesting, but I am not sure I am really on board with how they are presenting it--"
There was the Chapel of St. John's. Where you are requested not to take photographs. Where you are requested to keep your voice down--and gentlemen, please take off your hats. (Actual sign.) (I took my hat off. What am I, if not a gentleman?) Where they have not added any projectors, any sound bites, any fancy or glamorous technology to glitz up the stones. Where there is an informational plaque on a stand, and--that is it. That's all.
That's enough.
I did not look at the plaque at first. I did not have to. I could feel the age of this place around me. The solidity of it. The comfort and the quiet of it. When I did step over and read it, I was utterly unsurprised that it had been there for nine hundred years, and that, as far as I can tell, the only thing that's changed is the windows (stained glass) and the paint job.
All too soon, a group came in after me, talking at normal volume despite the signs. Someone took a picture (despite the signs) and even though someone else reminded her firmly not to, the peace had been broken. I fled: on to more Interactive! Displays! and big exhibit-labels on glass cases and a big modern-art dragon sculpture (admittedly, pretty cool).
But I think those few minutes were worth the price of admission all by themselves.
I wandered around for a good bit more, seeing various other bits of the Tower complex, photographing a raven (as all tourists must do), watching a Beefeater pace stiffly on a stretch of pavement about twenty feet long (and then, when it started raining, backing into a little niche just exactly like a robotic nutcracker putting itself back into its box)... but really, nothing could top the Chapel of St. John's.
Honestly? I'd go back to the Tower just to go through that one room again.
I had been avoiding it. I said to myself, "It's all historic--but I don't really care that much about kings--and it's so expensive!"
It was worth it.
I got there about half an hour after they opened; it was raining, and there was already a formidable line at the ticket office. I sighed and, like a good Londoner, joined the queue. (My mother has recently asked me to bring her something small and purely British as a souvenir. I am not sure what "purely British" means. So, since then, I have been thinking of wholly inappropriate things that fit that criteria: an Oystercard! a vaguely distant expression! a queue!)
At any rate, I got inside. There's one whole side of the Tower complex where you can go up (steep, rain-slick) steps to the walls, and walk along the top of the wall. The wall's sprinkled with towers, so you're always stepping down into tower rooms--those narrow spiral stone staircases--to see educational displays and then up more steps and out again into the rain. (It is not wheelchair accessible in the slightest.) Every time the weather has changed again: misty, drizzling, damp, raining.
...the one problem is that at the end there's a display of crowns, which everyone goes through at a very slow shuffle (becoming a further queue), and in addition to not caring that much about kings I don't care that much about crowns. So I ducked out of that fairly quickly. But the rest of the wall-walk--that was good, all historical details and some artifacts and some replicas, like of historical weapons that you can heft. And the occasional bit of a period room. Most of the rooms are done up with projectors and screens or tiny speakers or other technological aids to Viewing History, which I have mixed feelings about, but certainly they added detail.
After that, I was right by the Crown Jewels, but the only reason I would've gone in would've been motivated by the BBC Sherlock, and really that is not motivation enough when crowds and I are concerned. Anyway, I knew I wanted to see the White Tower, and I knew that the Tower of London as a whole would only get busier as it moved on toward lunchtime.
And the White Tower was--well. They had displays of armor and weaponry, which were quite nice; they had disorientingly Victorian white-painted sash(?) windows set into the big forbidding stone arches; they had further projectors and sound clips, of which I grew progressively more weary. And then, just as I was saying to myself, "Well, this has been interesting, but I am not sure I am really on board with how they are presenting it--"
There was the Chapel of St. John's. Where you are requested not to take photographs. Where you are requested to keep your voice down--and gentlemen, please take off your hats. (Actual sign.) (I took my hat off. What am I, if not a gentleman?) Where they have not added any projectors, any sound bites, any fancy or glamorous technology to glitz up the stones. Where there is an informational plaque on a stand, and--that is it. That's all.
That's enough.
I did not look at the plaque at first. I did not have to. I could feel the age of this place around me. The solidity of it. The comfort and the quiet of it. When I did step over and read it, I was utterly unsurprised that it had been there for nine hundred years, and that, as far as I can tell, the only thing that's changed is the windows (stained glass) and the paint job.
All too soon, a group came in after me, talking at normal volume despite the signs. Someone took a picture (despite the signs) and even though someone else reminded her firmly not to, the peace had been broken. I fled: on to more Interactive! Displays! and big exhibit-labels on glass cases and a big modern-art dragon sculpture (admittedly, pretty cool).
But I think those few minutes were worth the price of admission all by themselves.
I wandered around for a good bit more, seeing various other bits of the Tower complex, photographing a raven (as all tourists must do), watching a Beefeater pace stiffly on a stretch of pavement about twenty feet long (and then, when it started raining, backing into a little niche just exactly like a robotic nutcracker putting itself back into its box)... but really, nothing could top the Chapel of St. John's.
Honestly? I'd go back to the Tower just to go through that one room again.