2620 dungeon Feb 16, 2022

In the popular conception, dungeons are in the basement area, but in medieval times they would have been the top level of a tower. In fact, these were designed to be secure not because they were prisons per se, but as castle keeps, which is how the word meant in Middle English. This is still the case in the less well-known word 'donjon', likely based on the Latin 'dominus' meaning 'master' as it was the lord's tower most of the time; castles, ultimately, were homes.