Up on Salisbury Hill in Worcester's Salisbury Park sits a forty-foot stone tower that looks straight out of a medieval Scottish border keep. It has no military history at all — Stephen Salisbury III, scion of one of the city's leading families, built it in 1900 as a folly and a memorial to George Bancroft, a Worcester-born historian and one-time US Secretary of the Navy.
The tower is open only a handful of times a year, but the exterior is the main draw anyway. Walking up to it through the park on a quiet afternoon, with views of the city spreading out below, is one of Worcester's small unexpected pleasures. Park at the small lot on Bancroft Tower Road and follow the short path up.