Tower of London Menagerie Sculptures

The lowdown

For some six hundred years the Tower of London housed a royal menagerie, a genuine zoo of lions, a polar bear that fished in the Thames, an elephant and other exotic gifts to the crown. To remember it, the artist Kendra Haste created a series of beautifully lifelike animals out of galvanised wire, and they now prowl the grounds and the old moat.

You can see many of them for free without buying a ticket to the Tower itself, a lioness stalking the moat, baboons scrambling, a great bear rearing up. They are free, charming and a little eerie, ghosts of the strange creatures that once lived behind these walls.