This 2,000-Year-Old Roman Basilica Was Just Discovered Under an Office Building
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The original stone foundation of a key Roman-era building was located under a London office.
The site was likely part of a larger city forum (built around 80 A.D.) that helped establish Roman London—known as Londinium—before rapid growth took hold.
Owners plan to revamp the new building design to make the ruins accessible to the public.
All it took to find what experts are calling one of the greatest Roman era discoveries in London history was pushing aside a few filing cabinets and drilling beneath an office building. Okay, so maybe there was a bit more to the lead-up to discovering the city's first Roman-era basilica, but that was the final step.
During the planning for demolition and reconstruction of an office building just steps from London Bridge, crews spotted a clue that the city's first basilica—a public building akin to a modern city hall—was potentially buried underneath. So, they started searching, and on their third test dig, they found what they had been looking for.
It was located literally between filing cabinets.
'You can see a huge chunk of Roman masonry, and it's incredible that is survives this well,' said Sophie Jackson, from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola), according to BBC. 'We're absolutely thrilled that there's so much of it here.'
The Kent-based limestone foundation is estimated to have been the basis for a building roughly 130 feet long, 65 feet wide, and 40 feet tall (equal to more than two stories tall). Crews also found a roof tile imprinted with an official stamp.
'This is so significant,' Jackson said. 'This building will tell us so much about the origins of London, why London grew, and why it was chosen as the capital of Britain. It's just amazing.'
Dated to roughly 80 A.D.—not long after the Romans took over the region and founded what they called Londinium—the 2,000-year-old building was once part of a larger forum, which was a social and commercial hub that would have included a courtyard roughly 100 yards long.
'The basilica is the town hall, and then in front of it was a big open market square with a range of shops and offices around the outside,' Jackson said. 'It's the place you came to do business, to get your court case sorted out, it's where laws were made, and it's where decisions were made about London, but also about the rest of the country.'
The first mention of London in historical records comes from just after 40 A.D., when it was a settlement. It really hit the news in 60 A.D., when that settlement was sacked by Celtic queen Boudica. The Romans then retook the site and created a planned city.
Experts believe this basilica and forum had about a two-decade shelf life before the city outgrew the area and built one larger. Eventually, this site was built over, not to be seen again until now.
'The fact that Roman London is beneath your feet is, frankly, quite a remarkable emotion to experience,' said Chris Hayward from the City of London Corporation, according to BBC. 'You can actually see and visualize how Roman London would have been in those times.'
The Roman remains will somehow get incorporated into the new office space—quite the change for the owners of the property. Architects will work with city planners to design around the archaeological site, eventually hoping to expose the ruins and make them accessible to the public.
The BBC wrote that displaying London's past is part of the architecture of the city—from an old amphitheater beneath a glass floor at Guildhall Art Gallery to an installation at Bloomberg's offices that shows off the Temple of Mithras.
'To actually see people using and enjoying the space, moving through the public hall and down to see the remains, will be absolutely incredible,' James Taylor, an architect at Woods Bagot, told BBC about the changes. 'The scheme has been comprehensively adjusted. Simple things like the columns have had to literally move position, so you're not destroying all these special stones that we found in the ground.'
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