Monk Bar, York, North Yorkshire, England

Elsewhere in this online photo album, we have Micklegate Bar and this is another of the city's main gates: Monk Bar. It is the highest of the lot and houses a now very topical Richard III museum (the discovery of his remains in Leicester has seen to that). The image you see here is a late evening one from August 2013 when my intentions to continue further along the wall towards the Minster were frustrated by a group of slow moving Chinese or Japanese tourists who stayed for an age in the narrow stairs down from the next section of the wall that I had planned to walk. This is the side seen from within the city walls for the other side is the more ornate of the two. It does seem that impressing those coming from outside took precedence over pleasing the inhabitants of the city when these gates were necessary for defending the city and collecting tolls from travellers.