All London Tours

VIP Tower of London: After Hours Tour & Ceremony of the Keys

59 reviews

1.5 hours

Max 20

Why take this tour?

Highlights

Get exclusive VIP access to the Tower of London after hours, allowing you to explore without the crowds and have the monument all to yourself.
Witness the centuries-old Ceremony of the Keys, the world’s oldest military ritual, without having to figure out how to get tickets on your own.
Hear from your Beefeater guide how a royal residence became one of the world's most infamous prisons.
Find out why at least six ravens are kept in the castle—and why a polar bear lived here at one point, too!
Hear stories of the famous ghosts who haunt the Tower of London, including those of a few royals.

Sites Visited
Tower of London
Execution Square
Traitor's Gate
Church of St Peter ad Vincula
Bloody Tower (exterior)
White Tower (exterior)
Ceremony of the Keys

Tour Includes
After hours access to the Tower of London
Access to the Ceremony of the Keys
Yeoman Warder guide

Follow one of the Tower of London’s famous Beefeater guards through the grounds of the infamous fortress-turned-prison after the crowds have cleared out.

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Total Customer Reviews: 59

Verified Ratings

4.7 /5

based on 49 Walks’ customer ratings

Rating summary by category

Guide

4.8/5

Guest Support

4.7/5

Latest reviews

Great

Now I know this is out of your control however our Yeoman Warder Briggs (who was absolutely magnificent & just a delight) knew that we had paid a lot of money for the tour and encouraged us to write to you. He also was unaware that there were so, so many people there. I just wanted to say that we were very disappoint with the crowds last night there was 2 corporate groups and a large public group. There would have easily been 150 people to see the ceremony of the keys. You promoted the tour as “Get exclusive VIP access to the Tower of London after hours, allowing you to explore without the crowds and have the monument all to yourself”. As I said, last night there was 2 corporate groups and a public group with at least 150 people to see the ceremony of the keys. It was very crowded! It wasn’t “exclusive “ at all! And we by no means had the monument to ourselves! “Witness the centuries-old Ceremony of the Keys, the world’s oldest military ritual, with guaranteed spots”. We didn’t have “guaranteed spots”! I’m not sure how you can rectify these issues in the future, but I just wanted to share our disappointment with you. Regards Allan

Verified · Allan · Aug 22, 2024 · USA · Male · 55 to 64 years

Great

The tour and guide were fantastic! The only issue is that they allowed a huge corporate group in and that made it too crowded for the final ceremony part. For those who paid a lot of money for this tour, it was not fair that we were put to the side for an elite group.

Verified · Patricia · Aug 22, 2024 · USA

Excellent

Cannot rate this highly enough if you’re a history lover! This was such a cool experience!! Our guide DP Hardy was amazing - funny but so informative.

Verified · Casey · Jul 12, 2024

Excellent

After trying many times we finally secured tickets for The Ceremony of the Keys. John, our Yeoman Warder guide was excellent. He explained what we were going to see and why this event had been carried out every night for over 700 years. The Escort to the Keys the night we were there were the Gurkhas and they carried out their duties perfectly. We even had a Q and A afterwards which was interesting too. The weather was perfect and it was a great even to witness and a bucket list trip ticked off.

Verified · Leslie · Jul 12, 2024

Excellent

It is essentially the Beef Eater tour after dark, but so much better. Due to the small group size you get a lot of time to interact with the Yeoman Warder. John our Warder (Beefeater) was very engaging and I have done the daytime tour numerous time over the last 20 years and consider myself a tower nerd, learned some new interesting facts on this tour. He answered my questions and shared a lot of his person experiences living and working in the tower. The evening ends with the ceremony of the keys itself. If you’re looking for just the keys ceremony bit with the lower cost it’s available but so very hard to get and doesn’t give you one on one time with a Yeoman Warder.