About Tower of London
Almost a thousand years on the job have given the Tower a résumé that's hard to sum up: royal residence, prison for the high and mighty, mint, even zoo. The White Tower, the square block at the center, began to rise around 1078 on the orders of William the Conqueror, and the complex has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988.
Its reputation as an execution site is somewhat exaggerated: before the 20th century, only seven people were executed inside, and most sentences were carried out on neighboring Tower Hill. Today the star is the Crown Jewels collection, housed in a former 19th-century barracks and watched over by the Yeoman Warders, the royal guard since at least 1509.
