Middle-Earth Tours

Tour 2: The Places of Middle-Earth

Orthanc

Orthanc, by Alan Lee		 A great ring-wall of stone, like towering cliffs, stood out from the shelter of the mountain-side, from which it ran and then returned again....One who passed in and came at length out of the echoing tunnel, beheld a plain, a great circle, somewhat hollowed like a vast shallow bowl: a mile it measured from rim to rim. Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake. But no green thing grew there in the latter days of Saruman. The roads were paved with stone-flags dark and hard; and beside their borders instead of trees there marched long lines of pillars, some of marble, some of copper and of iron, joined by heavy chains....
     To the centre all the roads ran between their chains. There stood a tower of marvelous shape. It was fashioned by the builders of old, who smoothed the Ring of Isengard, and yet it seemed a thing not made by the craft of Men, but riven from the bones of the earth in the ancient torment of the hills. A peak and isle of rock it was, black and gleaming hard: four mighty piers of many-sided stone were welded into one, but near the summit they opened into gaping horns, their pinnacles sharp as the points of spears, keen-edged as knives. Between them was a narrow space, and there upon a floor of polished stone, written with strange signs, a man might stand five hundred feet above the plain." --TTT, "The Road to Isengard"

Isengard, by Rob Alexander
image from a Decipher trading card
Orthanc, by Paul Monteagle
Saruman," I said, standing away from him, "....You were head of the Council, but you have unmasked yourself at last. Well, the choices are, it seems, to submit to Sauron, or to yourself. I will take neither. Have you others to offer?"
    He was cold now and perilous. "Yes," he said. "I did not expect you to show wisdom, even in your own behalf; but I gave you the chance of aiding me willingly, and so saving yourself much trouble and pain. The third choice is to stay here, until the end." --Gandalf describes his capture by Saruman, FotR, "The Council of Elrond
Saruman blasts Gandalf in an image
from the first movie trailer

Orthanc, by Ted Nasmith
Escape from Orthanc,
by John Howe
Isengard, by Rob Alexander
So it was that when summer waned, there came a night of moon, and Gwaihir the Windlord, swiftest of the Great Eagles, came unlooked-for to Orthanc; and he found me standing on the pinnacle. Then I spoke to him and he bore me away, before Saruman was ever aware." --Gandalf describes his imprisonment in and escape from Orthanc, --FotR, "The Council of Elrond"

image from a Houghton-Mifflin
book cover

Saruman shows new-hatched Uruk-hai Lurtz around his bachelor pad in a scene definitely not from the books. Thanks to theonering.net.

Christopher Lee as Saruman,
image courtesy of
theonering.net


The White Hand, by Rob Alexander		 Now Gandalf rode to the great pillar of the Hand, and passed it; and as he did so the Riders saw to their wonder that the Hand appeared no longer white. It was stained as with dried blood. --TTT, "The Road to Isengard"

from a trailer on the official
movie site
image from Cinescape magazine
via The Land of Shadow

Wrath of the Ents,
by Ted Nasmith
The Ents at Isengard, by David Wyatt

image from theonering.net

 Round and round the rock of Orthanc the Ents went striding and storming like a howling gale, breaking pillars, hurling avalanches of boulders down the shafts, tossing up huge slabs of stone into the air like leaves. The tower was in the middle of a spinning whirlwind. I saw iron posts and blocks of masonry go rocketing up hundreds of feet, and smash against the windows of Orthanc. --TTT, "Flotsam and Jetsam"
Ents and Huorns were digging great pits and trenches, and making great pools and dams, gathering all the waters of the Isen and every other spring and stream they could find....It must have been about midnight when the Ents broke the dams and poured all the gathered waters through a gap in the northern wall, down into Isengard. --TTT, "Flotsam and Jetsam"
image from VFX Pro


For more on Orthanc, visit the Saruman page
Full-size versions of these pictures are on display at Rolozo Tolkien, the official LotR movie site, and theonering.net.