Tower of London Tours — Frequently Asked Questions

Yes for anything guided. The operators’ own figures show travellers booking these departures between 18 and 84 days ahead, and four listings carry a sell-out flag. A ticket alone is safer to leave late, though a summer weekend still sells through.

It is. The Yeoman Warder tour comes with admission and leaves the moat every 30 minutes, signposted as you come in. What a paid tour buys on top is a booked slot, a guide before you go through the gate, and on some departures entry before the public.

Three hours covers the Crown Jewels, the keep and Tower Green without hurrying. Two is enough if you skip the Wall Walk and the Medieval Palace. A full day is realistic only if you want the armouries properly.

The day ticket, at $51 on the listing we hold, sold by the charity that runs the fortress. It covers the Crown Jewels, the keep and the free Yeoman Warder tour. Cheaper options are a walking tour and a river cruise, and neither takes you inside the walls.

Entry before the public, the ceremony in which the gates are unlocked, and the Crown Jewels ahead of the queue. The guided part happens outside the walls: the venue does not permit guiding inside the Jewel House or the keep, so every guided departure hands you over at those two doors.

Yes. The Jewel House is included with every admission ticket. All a tour changes is when you get there, which in August is the difference between ten minutes and an hour of standing.

Partly, and the listings are blunt about it. Most guided departures say they are not, and the reason is always the same — cobbles, uneven ground and spiral stairs. The river cruise, the medieval walking tour and one private tour say they are.

In the grounds and most buildings, yes. In the Jewel House, no: photography is not permitted where the regalia are displayed. Bring a camera for the walls, the ravens and the view across to Tower Bridge.

There is no ghost tour of the fortress, and none of these departures is one. The closest thing is the after-hours tour, which walks the grounds with a Yeoman Warder after the gates close and ends at the Ceremony of the Keys — a military ritual rather than a haunting.

The nightly locking of the gates, performed at 9.52pm and described as the oldest extant military ceremony in the world. The Chief Yeoman Warder locks three gates, is challenged at the Bloody Tower archway, and the Last Post sounds at ten.

No. There are no luggage facilities and large items of luggage are not allowed in. Plan the day around your left luggage rather than the other way round.

No — there is no re-entry once you walk out. Worth knowing before you head off to find lunch, because the cafes inside are the ones that keep the ticket alive.

Yes, with one caveat: strollers are not allowed into the White Tower. The armouries, the ravens and a Warder’s storytelling carry most children easily, and one departure here is sold as a family private tour.

The tours listed here run from $24 for a walking tour that stays outside the walls to $360 for a private guide. Anything that includes admission starts at $51, and the guided departures cluster between $87 and $220.

An early-access departure if you are here between June and September, because the Jewel House queue is the one problem money genuinely solves. Outside the peak, the day ticket plus the free Warder tour covers the same ground for a third of the price.

In nine different places. Most gather at Tower Place beside the shop or at the official ticket office on Tower Hill; two meet at Tower Hill station; the river tour leaves from Tower Bridge Quay; and the full-day London tours meet in Parliament Square, three miles west.

Tower Hill, on the Circle and District lines, is about three minutes on foot. Tower Gateway on the DLR, Fenchurch Street for mainline services and Tower Millennium Pier for river boats are all close by.

Not for visitors. The fortress sits inside the City of London’s congestion and emissions zones with no public car park attached, so arrive by tube, rail or river.

The listing data and the Google Business Profile both give 9:00am to 5:30pm. Published hours shift with the season, so check the official page for the date you are travelling.

The small-group tour with a local expert and the VIP Beefeater tour, at three hours each. The day ticket beats both if you use it, because it stays valid until closing.

Yes, if stairs work for you. It is the Norman keep the whole fortress is named after, it holds the Royal Armouries, and the Chapel of St John inside it is the oldest church building in London still standing whole.

Because Henry III had it whitewashed in 1240. The name describes a paint job, not the stone underneath, which is Kentish ragstone and Caen limestone.

At least six by tradition, and eight as of 2025. They are looked after by the Ravenmaster, a Yeoman Warder with a team of assistants, and some were bred in Somerset.

The tradition is real; the history is younger than the story suggests. The legend is usually traced to Charles II, but the Tower’s own official historian reads it as a Victorian invention, and the earliest known reference to captive ravens here is an illustration from 1883.

By retiring from the British Armed Forces as a warrant officer with at least 22 years’ service and the Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. There are 32 Warders and one Chief Warder, and they live inside the walls with their families.

Nobody is certain. The earliest link to the Royal Household is Cosimo III de’ Medici, who used the word after visiting the Court in 1669, and it was already slang for the English before that.

There is a free ballot for places, and it is heavily oversubscribed. The paid alternative is the after-hours tour, which carries guaranteed access alongside a Warder’s tour of the grounds.

No, and its own listing says so plainly: it does not include the Crown Jewels or access inside the buildings. It is a tour of the grounds and the Ceremony of the Keys.

Yes. They are the working coronation regalia, still used, and the only such set in Europe. Most of what you see dates from about 1660, because the medieval and Tudor regalia were sold or melted down under the Commonwealth.

Because Westminster Abbey kept being robbed. A Keeper of the Crown Jewels was appointed in 1207, and the regalia moved into the fortress during the 14th century after a run of thefts at the Abbey.

No. The venue does not permit guiding inside the Jewel House or the keep, which is why every guided departure here hands you over at those two doors and picks you up afterwards.

Yes — Tower Bridge is a different attraction with its own admission. One departure bundles timed entry to the Tower Bridge Engine Rooms; the rest do not.

Shoes you can walk cobbles and spiral stairs in, and a coat that handles wind off the river. Water bottle refill points are inside. Leave the big bag at your hotel — there is nowhere to store one.

Yes, and the caps vary widely: group sizes on these listings run from six travellers to two hundred and fifty. A private guide takes up to twelve, the small-group tour twelve, and the river cruise carries far more.