In Lord Of The Rings, Barad-dûr is the tower fortress of Sauron. Taller than any structure built by man, it stands in Mordor near Mount Doom and at its peak The Eye Of Sauron endlessly scans Middle Earth looking for The One Ring. It’s the domain of ultimate evil, and it was time for me to build my own:

This is another monstrous set, and since Rivendell is my favourite LEGO build of all time I wanted this one as soon as it released. And bought it I did, although that was two years ago and it has sat on a shelf all this time waiting!

The 5400+ pieces came in exactly 40 bags which I’ve needed to pile two deep to fit them all in the above photo.

The tower is built in three parts with separate instruction books. In total; there are 1003 steps across the collective 620 pages of instructions!

Disappointingly, the set also came with a sticker sheet. No one likes LEGO stickers, and for a $460 set their inclusion is ridiculous. Most of these were placed on curved pieces, and apparently LEGO doesn’t yet have the technology to directly print onto curves.

The first instruction book is the base of the tower and uses about half of the bags of pieces. There’s a lot of detail here both inside and out, with doors that open via a hidden switch, a secret compartment where Gollum hides, and various items to furnish the interior for its wicked inhabitants. The angled walls are achieved using clever building techniques and are strongly reinforced, which is a good thing considering the size of the finished tower.

Most of the included minifigures are in the first few bags, and they’re all great. Frodo has a couple of faces, but I’ll always display the one where he’s almost seduced by The Ring.

A group of orcs with a range of armour and weapons inhabit the lower level of the tower. According to the instructions much of these figures – and their gear – is unique to this set. Yes that one in the middle is grilling a sausage!

Sauron and The Mouth Of Sauron are both suitably creepy. While I’m not showing them here, believe me both are even more disturbing without their helmets on! Until rereleased in a recent set, Sauron was one of the more expensive minifigures available, selling for up to $100 on the secondary market. He has a thrown room in the middle of the tower which has a Palantir hidden being a moving throne:

Here’s the finished set:

It took me over thirty hours to build, which I did in sessions of two or three bags at a time. The last book went very slowly since I could only use one hand (I’ve recently had hand surgery) and needed to be extremely careful since I was dealing with the spire.

The Eye lights up via a light brick, and can also be moved to look in any direction:

Here’s the view from behind showing the interior detail:

I enjoyed building this so much I hardly wanted it to end. Now I need to work out where to put it, a non-trivial problem since it’s 83 cm tall! I’ve got an idea or two, but for now it remains on our dining table since it’s remarkably heavy and I’m certainly not going to move it with only one hand!