Your tour of the Tower of London continues with the Bloody Tower, so called in memory of Edward IV's children, who were imprisoned and killed there. From there you'll continue on to the Inner Ward, the large internal courtyard. Nearby in the mighty Wakefield Tower, built in the 1200s, you can visit an exhibition of torture instruments that recalls the Tower's sinister fame.
The courtyard surrounds the White Tower, which as I mentioned consists of four square, slender, corner towers covered with small domes and with sturdy buttresses along its walls, which at their base are as wide as twelve meters.
Inside on the second floor, you can visit the precious St John's Chapel that has been preserved as it was when it was built around 1080, at the time of William the Conqueror. Even though it is small, it has a three-nave structure with cylindrical pillars, and even has a corridor that goes around the main altar. There's a remarkable collection of sixteenth-century British armour on the third floor.
Once you leave the White Tower, cross the inner courtyard to reach the Waterloo Barracks, built in the mid-1800s by the Duke of Wellington. Inside it you'll find the well-protected and most precious room containing the Crown Jewels. It is a collection of great symbolic value that is also worth a great deal. The precious objects inside include sceptres, rings, and crowns that are not only museum pieces: you can still see them used during the stately coronations of the sovereigns of England.
Among the most sensational objects, let me point out the seventeenth-century scepter of Charles II topped by the world's largest multi-faceted diamond, the 530-carat so-called "Great Star of Africa" , and the platinum crown of the Queen Mother with the famous Indian diamond Koh-i-Noor, whose history dates back to the 1500s, and which according to legend brings great luck to the women who possess it but great misfortunes to the men. In fact, all the male sovereigns who have come to own the diamond have died or lost the throne in a short space of time!
FUN FACT: seven ravens live in the Tower's courtyard and are seen to by a guardian who nourishes them, cares for them, and is especially careful to make sure they don't fly away. In fact, legend has it that if the ravens fly away from the Tower, the kingdom of England will come to an end!
