City Wall - a new mini-museum in London

 As I stood at the top of the black marble stairs going down, I felt a prickle at the back of my neck... ‘At almost every ancient site in the world,’ said Solomon Daisy over his shoulder, ‘when you go down, you go back in time.’ (The Time Travel Diaries, p 15) 

I was inspired to write those words (and an entire book) by stairs at the London Mithraeum, a relatively new museum that brilliantly showcases Roman London using archaeology and artefacts in a creative way. Black marble stairs lead you from street level down to a mysterious temple, recording the ground level with every few steps. As you descend you go back in time: past the Blitz of 1941, the Great Fire of 1666, the coronation of William the Conqueror in 1066 and the Roman exodus from Britannia in AD 410. 

Caroline on the stairs of the London Mithraeum

That’s when it first occurred to me that if you were to put a portable time portal on the modern street level, set the dial for Roman London and step through, you would fall at least 5 metres and probably break both legs. It’s not that London is sinking, but rather that the street level rises with each successive generation, so that the older parts of London are gradually being swallowed. That’s why you must go underground to find not only the Mithraeum, but London’s amphitheatre, various bathhouses and other random ruins. This includes the twenty-odd surviving fragments of London’s city wall; all are at a lower level than the surrounding ground, one section is even located in a fume-filled underground car park. 

 

Much nicer than a fume-filled underground carpark is one of London’s newest museums, City Wall at Vine Street. As at the Mithraeum, the stairs you descend become a kind of time machine taking you from the 21^st century to Roman level.  

 

Stairs at City Wall at Vine Street

Whereas the black marble stairs at London’s Mithraeum (top photo) plunge you down into a suitably murky underground temple that Romans called a ‘cave’, the installation here is the opposite. It is light, bright and spacious. I first went in May of 2023, and again in July. After the seething summer crowds at the Tower of London and the British Museum it was a joy to have this airy, echoing space all to myself. 

View of the wall and display case at City Wall

London was founded by the Romans circa 47 AD at the crossroads of land route and the river Thames. Used as a military and supply base it immediately attracted entrepreneurs from across the channel. Therefore, most of Londinium’s early population were ambitious immigrants, just like today. When Boudicca led some of the local British tribes to burn Londinium to the ground, it rose from the ashes within a year. There was another less well-documented disaster around 120 AD but it wasn’t until the year 200 that a massive stone and brick wall was built to replace an earlier wooden palisade. The wall has a fascinating history of nearly two millennia. Now a slice of that history is revealed in this bite-sized museum. 

 

The beautifully preserved chunk of Roman wall is teamed with a couple of glass-fronted cases of choice artefacts. The developers, Urbanest, hired the talented design firm Metaphor to work with archaeologists from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) who had excavated the site. Metaphor call themselves ‘storytellers’. One of their early proposals shows a mural listing some of the people who would have lived in the shadow of this wall: Legionary, Centurion, Gravedigger, Beggar, Gunmaker, Tea Merchant, Hawker, Silk Weaver, Tanner, Ankle Beater, Match Girl, Nipper, Gold Beater, Glassblower, Lamplighter. I love this idea because history is all about people and their stories. 

 

As you reach the bottom of the stairs you are confronted by a massive chunk of wall, brightly lit to show off its original structure as well as later additions. 

 

The west-facing inner part of the Roman wall

 This is the inner, western-facing wall. It’s an excellent example of Roman building: several courses of squared Kentish ragstone sandwiched by narrow layers of red ceramic tiles to level the wall and make it stronger. (Whenever you see those narrow courses of red brick like the burgers in a Big Mac, you can be sure your wall is Roman, not medieval.) Originally set on a base of orange sandstone, there are later additions beneath the wall, all designed to keep it standing: black-painted brick columns built in 1905, concrete blocks added in the late 1970s, red jacks and horizontal steel props inserted during the construction of the current building around 2021. This part of the wall is itself a kind of Time Machine. I can imagine the sweaty soldiers and slaves grunting as they bring rubble to fill the core; the legionary pacing up and down atop the finished wall, keeping watch; the centurion in his horizontal crested helmet and twisty olive-wood staff, barking orders. 

A cross section of London's Roman wall with bastion

The glass case shows us bits of amphorae, heating flues and food preparation bowls. I imagine burly sailors bringing the amphorae full of olive oil and wine from ship to city gate; a fish-sauce merchant from North Africa pressing his bare hands to the plaster wall warmed by a hypocaust on a winter day; the Germanic wife of a retired soldier grinding spelt for bread. 

 

Somewhere between 350-375 AD bastions were added to the Roman wall in an attempt to keep out Saxon raiders. Go around the outside of the wall to see the only surviving remnant of one of these bastions. These towers didn’t discourage Saxons who settled west of the wall in what was first called Lundenwic and would later be known as Westminster. 

 

For the only time since London was founded, the space within the wall was abandoned. For nearly four hundred years the only things living here were snails, birds, small wild mammals, a few shepherds, and a smattering of monks who used the seclusion to pray (and to build the first St Paul’s Cathedral around 604 AD). Amusingly, the case displays snails on a wall for this period. I imagine a hooded monk from St Paul’s watching a snail in the ruins of a Roman courtyard and praising God for all creatures great and small. 

 

In the 800s Viking raids became a constant threat, so in 886 AD King Alfred repaired the crumbling Roman wall and moved Londoners back inside. The trench outside the walls was widened. This was for protection, but people still used it to dump rubbish, beloved of archaeologists. Hundreds of churches were built within the walls and the Poor Clare nuns built an Abbey over the Roman graveyard outside the city wall. New mass graves were needed after the Black Death in 1348. I can see a gravedigger in a grubby tunic with calloused hands and a well-worn spade. 

 

Display cases at City Wall at Vine Street

In the 1500s the ditch outside the wall was filled in to become gardens and pasturage for animals. With the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII the Abbey and its land was sold. From the mid-1500s people began to build workshops and houses here. Luckily the Great Fire of 1666 does not quite reach this part of London. Meanwhile the wall was being gradually swallowed by the rising ground level. 

 

Thanks to objects in the cases from the 17^th and 18^th century, I imagine sweaty workers casting copper alloy bells in pits lined with horncore, the inside part of animal horns. I visualise a glassblower in a leather apron, dropping dark-green toffee-like strings and blobs of glass on the floor. I see a goldsmith skimming dross from the top of a crucible; he is squinting because the window panes don’t let in much light. 

 

Two Georgian residents are singled out in their own double display. Francis Joyce and James Reynolds both lived in Georgian townhouses near this section of the wall. Both houses had back gardens with cesspits that yielded fascinating clues to their lives. Although cesspits were intended for the contents of chamberpots, (which ‘night soil men’ would regularly collect), both pits contained broken porcelain, glass bottles and the bones of animals that had been butchered. Thanks to other documentation we know that Joyce was a boxmaker (an undertaker) who lived with his wife, their children, his mother-in-law and possibly a bird in a cage. They may have kept a pet bunny as the bones of a complete angora rabbit (with no butchering marks) were found in their pit. Reynolds was a gunmaker. He left less rubbish, but enough to conjure an image of him smoking a white clay pipe, while his wife used a fine boxwood comb to untangle her long hair. Or maybe she was the smoker and he was the owner of the comb. 

Bones of a complete rabbit found in a 18th century cesspit

With the coming of the railways and building of Fenchurch Street Station this part of London begins receiving even more imported goods from the docks. In 1863, the massive Metropolitan Bonded Warehouse opens on this site. Here wine and spirits arrived by train to be recorded, taxed, bottled and sent out to merchants and shopkeepers. Tea and cork were shipped here, too. The remaining stub of the Roman wall above ground was used as part of the structure but plastered over, so nobody knew they were walking past an ancient landmark. I can see a Victorian Clerk dipping a quill pen into a stoneware inkpot and sipping tea. Messenger boys play marbles between running errands. A Matchgirl on the street outside examines her reflection in a precious fragment of mirror she has just found. 

 

I imagine a Christmas party in the Interwar period with men and women dressed like characters from P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster. They are drinking wine, sipping cocktails and later quaffing cure-alls from smaller bottles to ease their hangovers. 

cocktail shakers from the 1920s

Now it is 1944. I hear the rattling drone of a V-1 ‘Doodlebug’ missile suddenly going quiet, just before the massive explosion that rocked the warehouse and destroyed most of it. But it was rebuilt, again incorporating the surviving part of the ancient wall. 

 

In the late 1970s I visited London as a student. I still remember seeing smart city businessmen in bowler hats walking on the same pavement as girls in mini-skirts and hippies. I imagine them now, stopping to watch the demolition of the old Metropolitan Bonded Warehouse just around the time of my visit. (A tiny blue bead in one of the final cases might have been dropped by a hippie.) By now the wall had been completely swallowed by the rising street level so those 1970s businessmen and hippies had nothing to see. However builders found this bit of wall in the basement of the warehouse, and in 1979 they stopped construction long enough to let archaeologists excavate. 

 

Because the wall was now under preservation order, the two buildings that rose on the site kept it in their basements and adopted suitable names: Roman Wall House and Emperor House. Between 1980 and 2010 the wall could only be viewed upon request. Then, for a few years between 2011 to 2018, it appeared behind glass as a feature of a nightclub with the suitably Roman name of Club II AD. This ancient wall vibrated to the sound of House music and the sight of clubbers dancing under strobe lights. From Roman soldier to Raver in 1800 years!

Club II AD on Google Street View from June 2012

Roman Wall House, Emperor House and Club II AD were all demolished in 2018 to make way for a new 11-storey building for Urbanest, a company which offers luxury student accommodation at more than half a dozen London sites. I don’t have to use my imagination to see wealthy and ambitious students from the UK and abroad; they’re coming and going in the lobby next door. 

 

The designers have thought of many other clever aspects for this mini-museum. A compass in the floor shows the direction of the river, the fort and the cemetery. A short, animated filmstrip on a loop tells you what went on here over the years and documents the succession of warehouses that incorporated the wall. (Watch it HERE) Charming graphics illustrate how to use a commode (a chair with a chamberpot in it) and a Georgian townhouse cesspit. A two-storey tall mural by artist Olivia Whitworth presents stylized versions of famous treasures of London history, with – appropriately – the oldest at the bottom and most recent on top.

 

A compass in the floor and artwork on the wall

Unlike the hero of my Time Travel Diaries book, I didn’t have to be decontaminated and debriefed after my visit to the past. When I came up the stairs through the exit, I found a delightful little coffee shop called Senzo. Tables on a mezzanine allow you to sip a fairtrade cappuccino and gaze down on the Roman wall and its artefacts, pondering what you have just seen. 

 

As I was finishing my coffee and making notes on my second visit, Senzo’s affable co-founder came down to chat. Born in Denmark to Asian parents, A.J. is typical of today’s Londoners who have come from all over the world – like me – to achieve their ambitions. He clearly loves his job. He is friends with lots of the students who live upstairs, and he actively encourages tourists to stop and sit and take in the world. ‘For me, it’s not about the coffee,’ A.J. told me. ‘It’s about the people.’ 

 

I couldn’t have put it better myself. 

Senzo coffee overlooking City Wall at Vine St

P.S. When you leave the building look out for Stop 4 on the London Wall Walk. It is one of a dozen remaining tile plaques that will take you on a pleasant treasure hunt around the City to see the other surviving remnants of London’s Roman wall.  

 

Stop 4 on the London Wall Walk

 

City Wall at Vine Street is closed on Bank Holidays but open every other day from 9am to 6pm. Entry is free but they ask you to book a time slot. Find City Wall just a few minutes’ walk from Fenchurch Street rail station, Tower Hill or Aldgate tubes. Thanks to MainlyMuseums.com who commissioned this article and published it first. 

Time Travel Diaries

In 2003, London builders were digging foundations for a new block of flats about half a mile south of the Tate Modern when they came across human bones in what appeared to be an ancient graveyard. Archaeologists were called in. They realised the bodies were from Roman times. Some of the dead had been buried in wooden coffins, others on a bed of white chalk dust, and some had both: a layer of chalk at the bottom of a coffin. 

One skeleton, that of a girl, had some expensive grave goods. There were two small glass perfume bottles either side of her head. There were the remains of a small wooden casket decorated with bone and bronze at her feet. Also, at her left hip were a small key and a clasp knife. 

The knife was unique. An iron blade folded into a handle of ivory, carved in the shape of a leopard devouring its prey. 

Ivory was an exotic and expensive material, suggesting that the girl may have been wealthy. 

However, her bones show signs of possible malnourishment, suggesting she was poor. 

The skeleton also told archaeologists that the girl died aged about 14. 

Because her remains and grave goods were so interesting, samples of her teeth and bones were sent to be analysed. 

From the teeth we got a DNA sample, which showed that she had blue eyes and that her mother was from Northern Europe. But stable isotopes in her ribs tell us that she grew up in the southern mediterranean, possibly even North Africa. They also tell us that from the time she was nine she started eating a London diet. This meant she made the long trip from North Africa (possibly) to Britannia (definitely) aged only nine years old.

We also know that she was tall for her age, she had bandy legs that were getting better and she had very bad teeth with several large cavities. 

There is no tomb or other identifying marker with her, so we don’t know her name or why she ended up in Londinium (Roman London). 

As soon as I read about her, I longed to go back in time to Roman London to meet the blue-eyed girl with the ivory knife and find out her real story. But of course Time Travel hasn't been invented yet – and probably never will be – so there was no way to know. 

One of the differences between an archaeologist and an author is that an archaeologist has to stick to the facts, but an author can use his or her imagination to create a story. 

So I did just that. With the help of bioarchaeologist Dr Rebecca Redfern and other clever people at the Museum of London, I gathered as many facts as I could about her. Then I used my imagination to make up a possible scenario that would explain why a blue-eyed girl from North Africa would come to Londinium in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD, and why she would have those particular objects in her grave. 

To link the story to modern times, I had a 12-year-old London schoolboy travel back to find her. That way I could describe Roman London in terms that a modern kid would understand. Also, having a modern boy go back in time to find a girl from the past adds risk and humour. And maybe even romance. 

I used as many real settings from Roman London as I could: the amphitheatre, a bathhouse, the massive basilica and – best of all – London's newly re-opened Temple to Mithras. This temple is in almost exactly the same place it would have been in the third century so it is the perfect place for a portable time portal. 

You could take the same facts about the Lant Street Teenager and make up a completely different story. In fact there are thousands of possible stories that could be told about her. 

Why don't you have a go? Write a story about how and why a blue eyed girl with an ivory knife travelled thousands of miles by ship to arrive at Londinium in the late third century. 

Then read The Time Travel Diaries and see how our ideas compare. 

The Museum of London regularly does a FREE live stream about the Girl with the Ivory Knife which you can watch from the comfort of your own classroom. 

P.S. All the lovely black and white illustrations from the book are by the brilliant Sara Mulvanny and they are her copyright, too. 

Interactive Mithras by Caroline Lawrence

The evening of Thursday 17 May 2018, just over a week from the date of this post, is your chance to meet me, Caroline Lawrence. I will be welcoming children (and their guardians) to an ancient Roman underground temple: London’s Mithraeum. This is the first #MuseumsAtNight session at the Mithraeum which only opened to the public last year. 

I am honoured to have been invited and will be doing some fun interactive activities to prepare kids aged 8-13 for the Mithraeum’s Immersive Experience. There will be four separate sessions, each lasting about half an hour. 

To brainstorm ideas for a new book I am writing called The Time Travel Diaries, I will be trying to recreate some of the sensations of being a worshipper of Mithras. 

This will be difficult in one sense. Mithraism was a Mystery Cult which means that lots of its rites and rituals were purposely kept secret, like a secret club. 

On the flip side of the coin, because we know so little, we can play around with various ideas based on the evidence and what we think we know. 

Here’s my script for what I hope to say:

First you need to know THREE BASIC THINGS.

Who Was Mithras? 

We think that Mithras was a new god created out of different older gods. This is called syncretism and is something the Greeks and Romans often did to link cultures together. Serapis was a blend of Dionysus, Hades, Osiris and Apis for Greeks in Egypt. Sulis Minerva linked a Roman god to a British deity. Mithras was certainly partly inspired by the Persian god Mithra (no ‘s’) and a creation story involving the stabbing of a cosmic bull. The Greek goddess of victory – Nike – is sometimes shown stabbing a bull. Mithras wore distinctive Persian clothes, which happens to be the same thing the Trojans wore, a long-sleeved tunic over leggings and the famous Persian cap which looks like a Smurf hat. He also has a billowing cloak, a dagger and sometimes a bow and arrow. Mithras looks a lot like Paris, the Trojan who started the Trojan War and killed Achilles by firing a poisoned arrow into his heel. 

What Did Worshippers Want?

The worshippers of Mithras wanted part of themselves to live forever. They may have believed that a series of initiations took the soul on a journey whose goal was immortality. There is lots of evidence for seven grades of achievement. Why seven? Because the Greeks and Romans believed in seven planets: the five they could see and also the sun and moon. They thought each ‘planet’ and the god who went with it ruled a sphere, or a ‘heaven’. So when you reached the highest level you were in the seventh heaven. One ancient document encourages the worshippers to say ‘stella sum’ or ‘I am a star.’ I wonder if they imagined the soul getting purer and purer as it rises through the grades until it is a little twinkling star, looking down on earth and waiting go into another body. (Yes, Mithraists probably believed in reincarnation) But, like every journey, there is often a battle or an ordeal. Each time a follower of Mithras wanted to go to a higher grade he had to go through a scary initiation.  

What’s with the bull?

If the cross is the symbol of Christianity, this very complicated and mysterious image of Mithras stabbing a bull is the symbol of Mithraism. It’s called a ‘tauroctony’ (tar-AWK-tony) which is Greek for ‘bull-slaying’, though that word never appeared in ancient times and we’re not even sure he was actually killing a bull. People have written whole books about the ‘tauroctony’ but for now just know that some of them have the signs of the zodiac around it, along with two men holding torches. The signs of the zodiac are linked to planets of course and the guys with torches might be guarding the gates to the heavens. The one with his torch up ushers the soul in its upward journey towards the stars. The one with his torch down is showing the immortal soul the way back down to a mortal body.  

Did you notice I keep saying ‘men’? That’s because, unlike almost every other religion known to us, Mithraism was for men only. So the first thing I will do is to give all you girls a sex change and grow you up real fast. Imagine you are a Roman man, probably a soldier. 

Next, I will assign you your grades or levels. As I said, there are seven. The avatars are Raven, Bridegroom, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Sun-Runner and Father. Each has its own ruling planet and the god who goes with that planet. They each had their own attributes. And each probably had a special colour and sound. 

Who wants to be a Raven?

You get a black wristband. You are the lowest and possibly most common grade. You are under the protection of the planet/god Mercury. Your code name is Corax. Several accounts talk of Ravens flapping their arms and making a ‘cawing’ noise. Everybody flap your arms and make a cawing noise!

Who want to be a Bridegroom?

Your attributes are a lamp and a garland. You get a yellow wristband. Bridegrooms are under the protection of the planet/goddess Venus. Your code name is Nymphus. The sound you made might have been ‘Yo!’ which was the ancient equivalent of ‘Yay!’

Who wants to be a Soldier?

You get an orange wristband because the soldier’s colours were red and yellow and when you mix red or yellow you get… orange! Soldiers were under the protection of the planet/god Mars. Your code name is Miles (MEE-layz). The sound you made might have been ‘Sin dex!’ Or maybe you just stomped. Everybody stomp and say Sin dex, which is short for sinister, dexter or ‘left, right’!

Who wants to be a Lion?

Lions get a red wristband. You were under the protection of the planet/god Jupiter. Your code name is Leo for one and Leones for more than one. Leonibus means ‘to or for the lions’ and you will hear it in the salutation ‘Nama, leonibus!’ or ‘Hail to the lions!’ No prizes for guessing the sound ‘Lions’ made! Everybody roar!

Who wants to be a Persian?

You get a white wristband because of your protective planet. Any guesses? Yes, the moon. Of course you know the moon isn’t a planet, but the Mithraists counted it as one. Your code name is Persis. Nobody has a clue what sound the Persians made but we know that sometimes worshippers made vowel sounds like Aahh, Eh, Ayyy, Eeee, Oh, Oooh, Ohhh because each planet had its own vowel: alpha, epsilon, eta, iota, omicron, upsilon & omega! So maybe the Persian made a vowel sound mentioned in one papyrus text: Or maybe they purred like a Persian cat. Everybody purr!

The sixth grade is very mysterious and we think very few people reached this level. Who wants to be a Sun-Runner?

 You get a gold wristband. You are under the protection of the ‘planet’ Sol, the sun! Your god is ‘Sol’ in Latin and ‘Helios’ in Greek. Your code name is Heliodromus. Your attributes are a torch, a crown with rays like the statue of the sun god (the Statue of Liberty wears a sun crown) and a whip. Why a whip? Because the sun was often imagined driving a fiery chariot. What sound did you make? Perhaps a whip-crack, or maybe a neigh! Everybody whinny! Now everybody say ‘Nama, Heliodromis!’ Which means ‘Hail to the Sun-Runners!’

The seventh and highest grade was the Father. 

Their colour was the purple of royalty so you get a purple wristband. But there was only one for each Mithraeum. So only one of you can be Father. Fathers were under the protection of the planet/god Saturn. Their code name is Pater. Their sound might have been ‘Hey, you kids! Get off my lawn.’ (joke!) Now everybody say ‘Nama, patri, tutela Saturni.’ Which means ‘Hail to the father, under the protection of Saturn.’

(If you want to see all the chants in Latin and English go HERE) 

You’re about to go down into the Mithraeum for the Immersive Experience. The word mithraeum has not yet been found, but we do know they said ‘Cave of Mithras’. They called it this because the temple was designed to look like a cave. In Roman times you had to go down seven steps, (natch!) into a dark space mysteriously lit by torches. Today you have to go seven meters below street level, because you usually go down to go back in time.

Because this temple was restored to almost the exact position it occupied in Roman London, I had an idea that it would be the perfect spot for a time portal. When you go to another time, it’s like beaming to a planet in Star Trek. You don’t want to beam into a wall or ceiling. So, if you want to travel to Roman London in the mid third century, the Mithraeum is the perfect place to put a portable portal. (Say that three times quickly!)

The premise for my work-in-progress is this: When 12-year-old London schoolboy Alex Papas is recruited by eccentric bazillionaire Solomon Daisy to go back to Roman London, his mission is to get information about a mysterious blue-eyed girl whose bones were discovered in a cemetery in Southwark. But things go wrong almost from the start and when Alex finds the girl he is totally unprepared for what happens next.

BUY THE BOOK!

P.S. Ten Fun Things About London's Mithraeum.   

Ten Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About London’s Mithraeum

by author Caroline Lawrence

Sophie Jackson, Catharine Edwards, Fiona Haarer & Michael Marshall

A few days ago I went to see London’s Mithraeum, recently reopened in the basement of Bloomberg’s new building. I’m fairly jaded by museums and wasn’t expecting anything special, but it was great. Coming up out of the ‘experience’ I ran into Sophie Jackson and Michael Marshall of MOLA – two of the archaeologists responsible for the display – along with Catharine Edwards, Professor of Classics and Ancient History from Birkbeck College and lecturer Fiona Haarer of the Roman Society. Although I am one of MOLA’s archaeology ambassadors, I had booked the normal way and our meeting was totally serendipitous. Chatting with them, I learned a couple of facts which I share below, along with a few other things you might not know. 

I do urge you to go and I hope this short list enhances your experience!

1. Exit 8. It’s easiest to reach London’s Mithraeum via Bank station exit 8. If you’re coming from Waterloo just get the Waterloo & City line. One stop is all it takes. Exit via the travelator and when it ends make a sharp left to reach Exit 8 which now has London Mithraeum added at the bottom of a list of landmarks. Go up the stairs to street level and continue straight ahead for less than 200 meters, passing the Starbucks on your left. You’ll see entrance to the Mithraeum on your right. It’s on the ground floor of Bloomberg’s brand new European headquarters. It doesn’t look like a Mithraeum from here; it looks like a modern art gallery because it is a modern art gallery called SPACE. N.B. As of 2019, you can take the brand new Walbrook Exit and emerge literally next door to the entrance!

2. Dead Time. Entry to London’s Mithraeum is free but you have to book a visit. They won’t just let you roll up. But sometimes if you roll up at their ‘dead time’ of 3pm they might let you in. N.B. Never show up on Monday, when the exhibition is closed. 

3. Three Parts. Like Gaul, the London Mithraeum is divided into three parts. The first part is in the art gallery reception where a guide will give you a Samsung tablet and point you at a modular wall displaying around six hundred roman artefacts all found within a few metres of where you are standing. Tap the outline of an object on your tablet and up comes a superb hi-res image of the artefact. Swipe right and find a line or two about what it is in a nice big, easy-to-read font. Why do you need a tablet when you can just look? Because some of the pieces are quite high up and/or small, and the imagery is superb. 

4. Special Glass. The piece of glass in front of the modular display of Roman objects is state-of-the-art. According to Sophie Jackson, Director and Archaeologist at MOLA, (Museum of London Archaeology), it is the biggest piece of glass you can get of that thickness and with the non-reflective properties. Hidden hinges on the left allow the slab of glass to swing open so that the modular displays can be regularly updated. 

5. Lucky Amulet. The tiniest object in the modular display wall is an amulet of amber shaped like a gladiator’s helmet. It is minuscule, about the size of your little fingernail. According to Michael Marshall, Senior Finds Specialist at MOLA, it was put in a day before we were there, replacing a less sexy pair of tweezers. Michael also told us that this tiny object was spotted by an archaeologist the old-fashioned way, with the naked eye. (Near the amulet is the famous LONDINIO tablet, also recently added by popular demand.) 

6. Go Down to Go Back. Someone at MOLA or Bloomberg had the very clever idea of showing how you have to descend to go ‘back in time’. As you go down the black marble stairs you see what the ground level would have been for important moments in London’s history such as the WWII bombing level and the Great Fire of 1666. There is a similar graphic on the back of the elevator. The Temple of Mithras dates from about 240 AD, almost 200 years after Londinium was first established. 

7. Famous Actress Joanna Lumley narrates some of the commentary on the mezzanine level, which is the second part of the experience where ‘clues to what form the cult took are explored in light and sound.’ Listen to the commentary as you watch a ghostly light show on the walls. 

8. Please Touch. You are allowed to touch the three resin casts: the head of Mithras, a tondo with inscription and a 3-D plan of the temple. As a cheerful guide named May explained to me: ‘The exhibition is meant to be touchy-feely!’ The head of the mysterious god Mithras with its distinctive Persian cap was found in 1954 on what was intended to be the last day of excavation of just one of hundreds of bomb-exposed sites in London. Planned building on the site was halted so that the Mithraeum could be excavated and eventually removed to another site. Bloomberg and MOLA have brought it back to exactly the place it was originally found. 

Get Well card by Roman glassmaker David Hill

9. Just Theories. Don’t swallow the written explanations or spoken commentaries whole. Our understanding of this mysterious cult is changing all the time. We don’t really know what they did at these ceremonies. We don’t even know if Mithras was actually killing the bull or just wounding it. In a recent article, scholar Christopher Faraone claims the word ‘tauroctony’ (i.e. ‘bull-slaying scene’) is a ‘nice-sounding Greek noun that appears nowhere in Mithraic inscriptions or literary testimonia and in fact nowhere in ancient Greek.’ JRS 103, pp 1-21 

10. The Experience. The third and final part of London’s Mithraeum is an ‘experience’ on the site of the ruins themselves. I don’t want to spoil it for you but it involves sound, light and mist. And although it was one of the coldest days of the year this underground space was comfortably warm. 

case.londonmithraeum.com

There is a superb free guide to the history of London as revealed in the Archaeology at Bloomberg co-produced by MOLA. You can download it HERE. (Spoiler alert: There are some images in the final pages of the brochure which might spoil the third part of the experience.) 

You can also get an interactive guide to the wall of artefacts on your smartphone or tablet by going to case.londonmithraeum.com

Bravo to Bloomberg, MOLA and Foster + Partners Architects! You did a great job. 

Book your FREE tickets to the Mithraeum HERE.