In a 1698 April Fools' prank, people went to which landmark to see lions washed?

In a 1698 April Fools' prank, people went to the Tower of London to see lions washed.

The joke drew on the Tower's real royal menagerie, which housed lions and other exotic animals for centuries. By the late seventeenth century, the menagerie was a well-known London attraction, and visitors could pay to see the animals kept there.

The advertised spectacle was supposedly the washing of the lions in the Tower's moat on 1 April. Crowds who arrived expecting an extraordinary public display instead discovered that the invitation was a hoax. The prank is often cited as one of the earliest recorded English April Fools' jokes.

The answer is sometimes confused with other famous London landmarks, especially London Bridge or Westminster Abbey. Those sites were not the setting of this particular prank; the joke worked precisely because the Tower already had a genuine reputation for displaying lions and other royal animals.