Tower of London Facts and Figures
The numbers, the dates and the people, each with the source it came from. Where a figure could not be traced to one, it is marked rather than rounded off.
The numbers
| Visits in 2025 | 2,817,852 |
| UK ranking by visits, 2025 | Ninth |
| Change on the year before | Down 3% |
| Yeomen Warders | 32, plus one Chief Warder |
| Minimum service to become one | 22 years |
| Ravens | At least six; eight as of 2025 |
| Rings of curtain wall | Two, concentric |
| Coordinates | 51.508026°N, 0.076073°W |
| Postcode | EC3N 4AB |
| Free tours included with admission | One every 30 minutes |
Sources are listed in the last section of this page.
The dates
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1066 | Founded towards the end of the year, during the Norman Conquest |
| 1075–1079 | The stone keep begun |
| 1080–c.1093 | An unexplained pause in construction |
| 1207 | A Keeper of the Crown Jewels first appointed |
| 1240 | Henry III has the keep whitewashed |
| 1270s | Edward I cuts the moat and builds the water gate |
| 1423 | The Master of the King’s Armour first appointed, based in the keep |
| 1483 | Edward V and Richard of York disappear |
| 1536 | Anne Boleyn beheaded on Tower Green |
| 1542 | Catherine Howard beheaded on Tower Green |
| 1554 | Lady Jane Grey beheaded; Elizabeth imprisoned in March |
| c. 1660 | The Restoration regalia made after the originals were destroyed |
| 1669 | Cosimo III de’ Medici records the word “Beefeater” |
| 1840s | The moat drained |
| 1883 | Earliest known reference to captive ravens |
| 1988 | Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site |
| 1994 | The present Jewel House opened; refurbished 2012 |
The keep’s start date is given two ways because the sources give it two ways: tradition says 1078, the timber says 1075–1079.
The people
- William the Conqueror: founded the fortress in 1066 and began the stone keep in the 1070s.
- Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester: recorded as overseeing the keep’s construction.
- Henry III: built the inner curtain wall, and had the keep whitewashed in 1240.
- Edward I: built the outer wall, the moat and the water gate now called Traitors’ Gate.
- Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey: the three queens beheaded on Tower Green.
- Charles II: the coronation for which the surviving regalia were made, and the reign local legend attaches the ravens to.
On screen
The fortress appears constantly in film and television, and the temptation is to list productions from memory. We have not, because a location credit is exactly the sort of claim that is easy to get wrong and hard for a reader to check. One screen connection is documented in our own source material and worth having: the live commentary on the official river tour was written with a co-creator of the BBC series Ghosts. Anything more would be guesswork, and this site does not publish guesswork.
What is not true
- That Anne Boleyn entered through Traitors’ Gate. The contemporary chronicle of Charles Wriothesley has her passing through a court gate in the Byward Tower.
- That the raven tradition dates from Charles II. The Tower’s own official historian reads it as a Victorian invention; the earliest known evidence is from 1883.
- That the Crown Jewels are medieval. Most of what is displayed in the Jewel House dates from about 1660.
- That the White Tower is white stone. It is ragstone and Caen limestone, whitewashed in 1240.
Where each number comes from
Visit figures are the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions’ published table of visits made in 2025. The founding, the keep’s dating, the whitewashing, the wall sequence, the regalia, the Warders’ service requirement, the Beefeater etymology, the ravens and the ceremony are from the published historical record rather than from tour marketing. The address, the hours and the coordinates come from the operator listings and the Google Business Profile supplied for this site.
The attraction’s own site and the UNESCO record were both unreachable from the machine this page was built on, so admission prices and the inscription criteria are deliberately absent. Check them on hrp.org.uk. The prices we can stand behind are the tour fares, and every one sits in the Tower of London tours comparison.
The stories behind the dates are on the history page, and every guided way to hear them told is compared on Tower of London Tours.