Beneath the White Tower on the pinnacle of Minas Tirith, a guarded door led into a wide passage, and that passage led on to a great hall, the Tower Hall, that held the throne of the Lord of Gondor. We do not know how long this hall had been in use, but it probably dated back to the first construction of the White Tower by King Calimehtar in III 1900. Whenever it was built, it was in use by the Ruling Steward at the end of the Third Age as the seat of his power.
The hall was wide and tall and strongly built, lit by deep windows cut into its walls on either side. It had a high, vaulted roof patterned in gold and other colours, upheld by several rows of black marble pillars. Between these columns were arrayed statues of ancient Kings. At the far end from the door was the throne of Gondor, beneath a great stone helm and a jewelled image of a flowering tree. In the time of the Stewards, this throne was left empty, and instead the Lords of Gondor sat in a simple black stone chair beneath the throne's dais, to symbolise their lower status.
Notes
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The Tower Hall was within the White Tower, and so it cannot have existed before III 1900, when King Calimehtar raised that Tower. The Kings of Gondor had been using Minas Anor as a royal residence since the time of Ostoher, long before Calimhetar's time, so presumably there was some kind of royal hall there that was replaced by the Tower Hall.
After Calimehtar established his throne in the Hall, the monarchy would survive for only a hundred and fifty years. During that time, only three further Kings would use the Tower Hall's throne before Eärnur was lost in Minas Morgul, bringing the Kingship to an end until it was refounded by Aragorn Elessar after the War of the Ring.
Some seven centuries after the original White Tower was raised by Calimehtar, it was rebuilt by Steward Ecthelion I (and after that time was commonly called the Tower of Ecthelion). Though the line of Kings had come to an end centuries before Ecthelion's time, he nonetheless preserved the royal throne within the Tower Hall. Even at the end of the Third Age, the Hall of the Kings still held a royal throne (which had been unoccupied for more than a thousand years at that point) while the Stewards ruled from a seat at the base of the empty throne's great dais.
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- Updated 8 March 2024
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