What's in the Dark Tower?

[BalrogRingDestroyer]

I've always wondered what was in there. Did Tolkien write any letters about what was in there? In the book, it had scant descriptions on the place, mostly because everyone was trying to avoid the place at all costs.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Well, there's Sauron.
A Palantir.
Probably a Chamber of Rings.
Dungeons.
Torture Chamber.

Maybe a Nazgul Cloakroom?

And orcses. Lots of orcses.

 

[Elthir]

Maybe a Nazgul Cloakroom?

LOL

And I'll guess . . . a big iron box full of contact lenses

 

[Alcuin]

In the chapter “Mount Doom” in RotK, there are three descriptions of Barad-dûr that might help.

On the journey across the plain of Gorgoroth, Sam and Frodo saw that

from the Dark Tower there crept the veils of Shadow that Sauron wove about himself.

I have often considered that passage, and I think there was actually a darkness that surrounded Barad-dûr, twisting perhaps like a fog about the tower. Later, as they climbed the side of Orodruin, they saw the shadows of the tower again:

Far off the shadows of Sauron hung; but torn by some gust of wind out of the world, or else moved by some great disquiet within, the mantling clouds swirled, and for a moment drew aside; and then he saw, rising black, blacker and darker than the vast shades amid which it stood, the cruel pinnacles and iron crown of the topmost tower of Barad-dûr. One moment only it stared out, but as from some great window immeasurably high there stabbed northward a flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye; and then the shadows were furled again and the terrible vision was removed. The Eye was not turned to them: it was gazing north to where the Captains of the West stood at bay, and thither all its malice was now bent, as the Power moved to strike its deadly blow; but Frodo at that dreadful glimpse fell as one stricken mortally.

Barad-dûr itself was built upon the western side of a spur that reached southwards from the Ashen Mountains (Ered Lithui) which running from west to east formed the northern border of Mordor. Sauron’s throne room may have been any where in the fortress, but he used one room in the tower as a principle lair, the place with the “flame of red, the flicker of a piercing Eye” from which he watched Aragorn and the Captains of the West approach the Morannon.

Its foundations were laid down in the Second Age before Sauron made the Ruling Ring, but the power he used to construct and solidify those foundations he placed into the Ring, so that they could not be removed while the Ring remained; and when the Ring was destroyed, the foundations of his citadel were also destroyed the dissipation of that power. Sam witnessed this when lugging the injured Frodo from the Sammath Naur,

A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed. Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land. And then at last over the miles between there came a rumble, rising to a deafening crash and roar…

It may be that two places referenced by wicked creatures in the story were also in Barad-dûr: the Black Pits and the Houses of Lamentation. Sam overheard Shagrat mentioning the Black Pits when upbraiding Snaga in the tower of Cirith Ungol: they were some place of torment Sauron dumped his servants unfortunate to receive his especial opprobrium; while the Houses of Lamentation with which the Witch-king threatened Éowyn were a person’s “flesh [was] devoured, and [his] shrivelled mind … left naked to the Lidless Eye.” Which sounds very much like what happened shortly afterwards to the Witch-king himself at the hands of Éowyn and Merry.

…a big iron box full of contact lenses

Really big contact lenses.

 

[Squint-eyed Southerner]

Really big contact lenses

Not invented yet.

It's well-known that Sauron used a giant monocle.

 

[BountyHunter]

The Crimson King.

Oops, wrong book series.

 

[Rebecca Fike]

I want to know more but yet I didn't go through it.

 

[Deleted member 12094]

Here is another reference to Barad-dûr, taken from "the Road to Isengard", for what it's worth:

But Saruman had slowly shaped it (=Isengard) to his shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived – for all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, and which fondly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child’s model or a slave’s flattery, of that vast fortress, armoury, prison, furnace of great power, Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, which suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its pride and its immeasurable strength.​