Tower of London

Founded at the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest, with the White Tower, which gives the whole castle its name, raised by William the Conqueror in 1078 and resented from the start as a symbol of oppression. Richard I, Henry III and Edward I expanded it through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries into a complex of buildings inside two concentric rings of wall and a moat. It has been armoury, treasury, menagerie, Royal Mint, public record office and home of the Crown Jewels. Monarchs traditionally spent the nights before coronation here before processing to Westminster Abbey.