The Tower of London

Despite the reputation, only seven people were ever executed inside the Tower before the world wars.

That number is the useful correction to almost everything else you have heard. The Tower's standing as a place of torture and death was built up by 16th-century religious propagandists and then by 19th-century writers, and it has outlived the evidence.

What it actually is: His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, a citadel on the north bank of the Thames, founded toward the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest. The White Tower that gives the castle its name was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was, at the start, a resented symbol of oppression. It grew into a complex of buildings inside two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat, expanded mainly under Richard I, Henry III and Edward I across the 12th and 13th centuries. It has been besieged repeatedly, because controlling the Tower has mattered to controlling the country.

It has also been an armoury, a treasury, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public record office and the home of the Crown Jewels. From the early 14th century until the reign of Charles II, a monarch would traditionally spend several nights here and then process from the Tower to Westminster Abbey to be crowned.

The prison years peaked in the 16th and 17th centuries, when people who had fallen from favour were held here: Elizabeth I before she was queen, Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth Throckmorton. That is where the phrase sent to the Tower comes from. In the late 15th century the Princes in the Tower were housed here before they disappeared, presumed murdered.

Historic Royal Palaces runs it now as a World Heritage Site. Last entry is at 16:30 and the last Yeoman Warder guided tour, included in the ticket, goes at 15:15, so arrive earlier than you think you need to.