An Entire Roman City Is Hidden Beneath London

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:00 · - London is actually two cities,
0:01 · one built on top of the other.
0:03 · Before there was London, there was Londinium,
0:06 · an outpost of the Roman Empire that was founded right here
0:09 · in the heart of modern London.
0:10 · And it's from this ancient city, Londinium,
0:12 · that modern London takes its name and so much more.
0:16 · And there's still evidence
0:17 · of London's 2,000 year old Roman origins all over the city
0:20 · if you know where to look.
0:22 · I'm Nick Potts, I'm an architect,
0:24 · and today we're taking a walking tour
0:26 · of London's Roman origins.
0:28 · [soft upbeat music]
0:36 · It's not just the name London that comes from ancient Rome.
0:39 · The layout of the city,
0:40 · even including the location of London Bridge,
0:42 · is directly connected from the original plan
0:44 · of Roman Londinium.
0:46 · And even today, pieces of the ancient city continue
0:48 · to be discovered, giving us more clarity about how the rise
0:52 · and the fall of ancient Londinium shaped
0:55 · and continues to shape the modern city of London.
0:57 · So if all roads lead to Rome,
0:59 · let's start at the most important intersection
1:01 · of ancient Londinium.
1:02 · [soft bright music]
1:07 · Right now we're standing at the most important intersection
1:10 · of Roman Londinium
1:11 · because underneath our feet is the starting point
1:14 · of every Roman city, the Roman Forum.
1:17 · As Rome expanded,
1:18 · every new city they built was designed as a grid,
1:20 · and at the center of each grid was what's called the Forum.
1:23 · The Forum in a Roman city was both a marketplace
1:26 · for commerce, but also a marketplace of ideas.
1:28 · It was a place for politics, legal proceedings,
1:31 · and civic gatherings of all kinds.
1:33 · And in every Roman city,
1:35 · the Forum was located near the intersection
1:37 · of two major roads,
1:39 · which were called the Cardo and the Decumanus.
1:42 · The Cardo was the primary market street,
1:45 · and the Decumanus was the primary military street,
1:48 · connecting the towns throughout the empire.
1:50 · And this phrase, "All roads lead to Rome,"
1:54 · has something to do with that.
1:55 · As the empire was expanding,
1:57 · symbolically they wanted there to be a street
1:59 · that connected these provincial outposts
2:03 · and peripheral towns back to the heart of the empire,
2:06 · which was Rome.
2:07 · This is the intersection of Gracechurch Street
2:10 · and Lombard Street where it transitions to Fenchurch.
2:12 · And in Londinium, this is where the Roman Forum was.
2:16 · In a Roman outpost,
2:17 · the Decumanus was primarily east west,
2:19 · and the Cardo was north south.
2:21 · And if you look at the map of London today,
2:23 · you can still see this intersection of the Cardo,
2:26 · essentially at Gracechurch Street leading down
2:29 · to London Bridge,
2:30 · which was in the same location
2:33 · that London Bridge currently is, more or less.
2:36 · And in the case of Londinium,
2:37 · where the settlement was located directly north
2:40 · of the river Thames and the important port,
2:43 · which is the reason why the Romans decided
2:45 · to put this place here,
2:47 · the Cardo was as crucial link between the river
2:49 · and all the trade that happened on it
2:51 · and the main marketplace.
2:52 · So the commerce in Roman Londinium ran north to south
2:56 · on the Cardo and various streets parallel to it.
2:59 · And as a city that's primarily a medieval settlement or was,
3:04 · London has a fairly ad hoc informal grid.
3:07 · But in this area in particular,
3:09 · you can see the ghost of the grid of Roman Londinium,
3:12 · which is torn down in AD 450.
3:14 · It's fairly unique in the older parts of London
3:17 · to see this grid structure,
3:18 · and that's a direct ancestor of the Roman settlement
3:21 · that existed here before.
3:24 · And you can see a ghost of that today
3:25 · in the names of the streets that currently exist
3:29 · between the Forum location and the river Thames.
3:32 · You see Pudding, which talked about meat trade.
3:35 · You see Fish Hill that talked about the movement
3:38 · of fish up and down.
3:39 · And even though these uses came back in the medieval city
3:43 · after Londinium was abandoned,
3:45 · it almost came back from the dead
3:47 · when the site was resettled.
3:49 · In fact, the Romans were the ones
3:51 · to first build a bridge across the Thames.
3:54 · And the location of that bridge currently can be seen
3:57 · in the street grid next to it.
4:00 · This original bridge would've been located parallel
4:03 · to where today's London bridge is
4:05 · and directly in alignment with the Cardo
4:07 · and connected to the Forum.
4:08 · But we don't need to look
4:09 · at the map to figure out
4:10 · where the Roman Forum would've been located in Londinium
4:13 · because in 2025,
4:15 · archeologists drilled a massive hole
4:17 · into the floor of an office building
4:19 · and uncovered the foundations
4:20 · of the most important building in Roman Londinium.
4:23 · [upbeat music]
4:30 · Behind me is Leadenhall Market,
4:32 · one of London's most historic markets,
4:35 · and also the site of some
4:36 · of London's most newly rediscovered ruins.
4:39 · What was recently found underneath this building
4:42 · actually reconfirmed the location
4:44 · of Roman London's most important building, the Basilica.
4:49 · We're just down the street here from the center
4:51 · of the Forum on nearly the exact site
4:53 · of the original Roman Basilica.
4:54 · In a Roman city, the Basilica was always located
4:57 · on one end of the Forum
4:59 · and was a space used for political, economic,
5:01 · and administrative purposes such as court proceedings.
5:04 · Leadenhall Market has existed in this location
5:07 · since roughly the 1300s,
5:09 · but the current structure was built in the late 1800s,
5:12 · designed by Horace Jones.
5:14 · And the building that he designed in the 19th century
5:16 · is strikingly similar to the Roman building
5:18 · that existed here nearly 2,000 years ago.
5:21 · The word basilica brings to mind a religious building,
5:24 · a Christian Church, and that's no accident.
5:27 · A lot of early Christian churches took over the sites
5:30 · of Roman Basilicas and their plan,
5:33 · which was a large central nave and side aisles.
5:37 · And the formerly secular,
5:39 · kind of multi-purpose use of a Roman Basilica was co-opted
5:43 · by a Christian typology.
5:45 · However, the mall or the market took
5:48 · on a similar sort of name.
5:50 · And so it's an interesting irony that the Leadenhall Market
5:54 · essentially co-opted the Basilica plan
5:56 · with a large vaulted, central nave
6:00 · and its side aisles for the markets and shops,
6:02 · which is an almost reappropriation of this Roman space plan.
6:07 · And it's an amazing coincidence that this building type,
6:10 · this market that's co-opted the type form
6:13 · of a Roman Basilica was reconstructed
6:16 · in the 19th century directly over
6:19 · and in alignment with the original Roman Basilica.
6:22 · And this was done without the architect likely knowing
6:24 · about the location or frankly the shape
6:27 · of the original Roman Basilica.
6:29 · And while the Basilica is the most recent rediscovery
6:32 · in Roman London, it's far from the only one.
6:34 · This site was carefully uncovered by archeologists
6:37 · during the construction of a building next door.
6:39 · But many of the ruins
6:40 · of Roman London would've never been discovered
6:42 · had it not been for the bombings during the blitz
6:45 · of World War II.
6:46 · [upbeat music]
6:51 · We're standing in the Barbican Centre
6:52 · and the round tower you can see
6:54 · behind me was quite possibly the oldest piece
6:57 · of Roman construction within Londinium.
7:00 · The Barbican is a brutalist building complex
7:02 · that helped to inject modern architecture
7:04 · into the fabric of historic London.
7:06 · During the blitz of World War II,
7:08 · this area was heavily bombed
7:10 · and while the entire city
7:11 · that had been built up over the several thousand years
7:15 · was largely destroyed,
7:16 · what was revealed was a lot of Roman foundations
7:19 · and the basis for the original city.
7:21 · Before Roman Londinium,
7:22 · there was just a fort on this location
7:24 · and the location marked by that tower,
7:26 · even though the tower has been built up on
7:28 · and modified over the years,
7:30 · is the location of the northern most corner of that fort.
7:34 · This was far from the only place that was bombed
7:36 · during the blitz
7:37 · and throughout the historic core of London,
7:39 · there were little bits and pieces that were discovered
7:42 · as almost treasures that emerged despite all of the trauma
7:46 · of the bombing.
7:47 · Parts of a fresco were discovered underneath Lime Street,
7:50 · the foundations of a massive building
7:51 · under the Canon Street Station
7:53 · and the Temple of Mithras,
7:54 · which is currently on exhibition
7:56 · under the new Bloomberg headquarters.
7:58 · And similar to what was done with the Mithraeum,
8:01 · where it was really showcased as part of the new building,
8:04 · the Barbican takes that to an extreme
8:05 · and creates an entire landscape built around the fragments
8:08 · of its Roman past.
8:10 · And this is really the story of London.
8:11 · And you can see this all along the former Roman wall,
8:15 · these different layers, the Roman layer of wall,
8:18 · the medieval constructions both on top of
8:20 · and incorporating the wall
8:22 · and new buildings popping up usually
8:24 · around it rather than on top of it, showcasing it.
8:27 · So if you look around us
8:28 · in these very kind of openly modernist buildings,
8:32 · there are bits of the language of the Roman architecture
8:35 · that originally happened here.
8:36 · You see brick, you see arches,
8:39 · and they're reinterpreted in a very kind of contemporary,
8:42 · almost inverted way.
8:44 · You see these fragments of almost like a Roman concrete.
8:47 · So these buildings are riffing on the language
8:49 · of Roman architecture without explicitly copying it.
8:53 · And this is really what modernism
8:55 · of this period was trying to do.
8:56 · It was trying to monumentalize the past
8:59 · and create a new language that was fitting for modern times
9:03 · as opposed to previous neoclassical revivals
9:06 · that were explicitly copying and mimicking the Romans.
9:09 · The Barbican is a very modern mixed use complex
9:12 · with schools, with housing, and art centre,
9:15 · public space and old church.
9:17 · And there's a very kind of modernist urban planning sort
9:19 · of vision for rebuilding the city that its architects,
9:23 · Chamberlin, Powell and Bon,
9:24 · utilized to its utmost.
9:26 · And this is really a unique space in London,
9:28 · primarily because of the blitz.
9:30 · The city had an opportunity
9:31 · to build something really at the scale
9:34 · of large modernist urban planning.
9:36 · And the trauma of the war created in its horrific aftermath,
9:41 · an opportunity for London to experiment a bit
9:43 · with 20th century urban planning ideals.
9:45 · And the Barbican represents this
9:47 · in both its program, its style and its form.
9:50 · This is just a small piece of London and its Roman origins.
9:54 · Let us know what other cities we should explore
9:56 · in comments below.

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--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:00	·	- London is actually two cities,
0:01	·	one built on top of the other.
0:03	·	Before there was London, there was Londinium,
0:06	·	an outpost of the Roman Empire that was founded right here
0:09	·	in the heart of modern London.
0:10	·	And it's from this ancient city, Londinium,
0:12	·	that modern London takes its name and so much more.
0:16	·	And there's still evidence
0:17	·	of London's 2,000 year old Roman origins all over the city
0:20	·	if you know where to look.
0:22	·	I'm Nick Potts, I'm an architect,
0:24	·	and today we're taking a walking tour
0:26	·	of London's Roman origins.
0:28	·	[soft upbeat music]
0:36	·	It's not just the name London that comes from ancient Rome.
0:39	·	The layout of the city,
0:40	·	even including the location of London Bridge,
0:42	·	is directly connected from the original plan
0:44	·	of Roman Londinium.
0:46	·	And even today, pieces of the ancient city continue
0:48	·	to be discovered, giving us more clarity about how the rise
0:52	·	and the fall of ancient Londinium shaped
0:55	·	and continues to shape the modern city of London.
0:57	·	So if all roads lead to Rome,
0:59	·	let's start at the most important intersection
1:01	·	of ancient Londinium.
1:02	·	[soft bright music]
1:07	·	Right now we're standing at the most important intersection
1:10	·	of Roman Londinium
1:11	·	because underneath our feet is the starting point
1:14	·	of every Roman city, the Roman Forum.
1:17	·	As Rome expanded,
1:18	·	every new city they built was designed as a grid,
1:20	·	and at the center of each grid was what's called the Forum.
1:23	·	The Forum in a Roman city was both a marketplace
1:26	·	for commerce, but also a marketplace of ideas.
1:28	·	It was a place for politics, legal proceedings,
1:31	·	and civic gatherings of all kinds.
1:33	·	And in every Roman city,
1:35	·	the Forum was located near the intersection
1:37	·	of two major roads,
1:39	·	which were called the Cardo and the Decumanus.
1:42	·	The Cardo was the primary market street,
1:45	·	and the Decumanus was the primary military street,
1:48	·	connecting the towns throughout the empire.
1:50	·	And this phrase, "All roads lead to Rome,"
1:54	·	has something to do with that.
1:55	·	As the empire was expanding,
1:57	·	symbolically they wanted there to be a street
1:59	·	that connected these provincial outposts
2:03	·	and peripheral towns back to the heart of the empire,
2:06	·	which was Rome.
2:07	·	This is the intersection of Gracechurch Street
2:10	·	and Lombard Street where it transitions to Fenchurch.
2:12	·	And in Londinium, this is where the Roman Forum was.
2:16	·	In a Roman outpost,
2:17	·	the Decumanus was primarily east west,
2:19	·	and the Cardo was north south.
2:21	·	And if you look at the map of London today,
2:23	·	you can still see this intersection of the Cardo,
2:26	·	essentially at Gracechurch Street leading down
2:29	·	to London Bridge,
2:30	·	which was in the same location
2:33	·	that London Bridge currently is, more or less.
2:36	·	And in the case of Londinium,
2:37	·	where the settlement was located directly north
2:40	·	of the river Thames and the important port,
2:43	·	which is the reason why the Romans decided
2:45	·	to put this place here,
2:47	·	the Cardo was as crucial link between the river
2:49	·	and all the trade that happened on it
2:51	·	and the main marketplace.
2:52	·	So the commerce in Roman Londinium ran north to south
2:56	·	on the Cardo and various streets parallel to it.
2:59	·	And as a city that's primarily a medieval settlement or was,
3:04	·	London has a fairly ad hoc informal grid.
3:07	·	But in this area in particular,
3:09	·	you can see the ghost of the grid of Roman Londinium,
3:12	·	which is torn down in AD 450.
3:14	·	It's fairly unique in the older parts of London
3:17	·	to see this grid structure,
3:18	·	and that's a direct ancestor of the Roman settlement
3:21	·	that existed here before.
3:24	·	And you can see a ghost of that today
3:25	·	in the names of the streets that currently exist
3:29	·	between the Forum location and the river Thames.
3:32	·	You see Pudding, which talked about meat trade.
3:35	·	You see Fish Hill that talked about the movement
3:38	·	of fish up and down.
3:39	·	And even though these uses came back in the medieval city
3:43	·	after Londinium was abandoned,
3:45	·	it almost came back from the dead
3:47	·	when the site was resettled.
3:49	·	In fact, the Romans were the ones
3:51	·	to first build a bridge across the Thames.
3:54	·	And the location of that bridge currently can be seen
3:57	·	in the street grid next to it.
4:00	·	This original bridge would've been located parallel
4:03	·	to where today's London bridge is
4:05	·	and directly in alignment with the Cardo
4:07	·	and connected to the Forum.
4:08	·	But we don't need to look
4:09	·	at the map to figure out
4:10	·	where the Roman Forum would've been located in Londinium
4:13	·	because in 2025,
4:15	·	archeologists drilled a massive hole
4:17	·	into the floor of an office building
4:19	·	and uncovered the foundations
4:20	·	of the most important building in Roman Londinium.
4:23	·	[upbeat music]
4:30	·	Behind me is Leadenhall Market,
4:32	·	one of London's most historic markets,
4:35	·	and also the site of some
4:36	·	of London's most newly rediscovered ruins.
4:39	·	What was recently found underneath this building
4:42	·	actually reconfirmed the location
4:44	·	of Roman London's most important building, the Basilica.
4:49	·	We're just down the street here from the center
4:51	·	of the Forum on nearly the exact site
4:53	·	of the original Roman Basilica.
4:54	·	In a Roman city, the Basilica was always located
4:57	·	on one end of the Forum
4:59	·	and was a space used for political, economic,
5:01	·	and administrative purposes such as court proceedings.
5:04	·	Leadenhall Market has existed in this location
5:07	·	since roughly the 1300s,
5:09	·	but the current structure was built in the late 1800s,
5:12	·	designed by Horace Jones.
5:14	·	And the building that he designed in the 19th century
5:16	·	is strikingly similar to the Roman building
5:18	·	that existed here nearly 2,000 years ago.
5:21	·	The word basilica brings to mind a religious building,
5:24	·	a Christian Church, and that's no accident.
5:27	·	A lot of early Christian churches took over the sites
5:30	·	of Roman Basilicas and their plan,
5:33	·	which was a large central nave and side aisles.
5:37	·	And the formerly secular,
5:39	·	kind of multi-purpose use of a Roman Basilica was co-opted
5:43	·	by a Christian typology.
5:45	·	However, the mall or the market took
5:48	·	on a similar sort of name.
5:50	·	And so it's an interesting irony that the Leadenhall Market
5:54	·	essentially co-opted the Basilica plan
5:56	·	with a large vaulted, central nave
6:00	·	and its side aisles for the markets and shops,
6:02	·	which is an almost reappropriation of this Roman space plan.
6:07	·	And it's an amazing coincidence that this building type,
6:10	·	this market that's co-opted the type form
6:13	·	of a Roman Basilica was reconstructed
6:16	·	in the 19th century directly over
6:19	·	and in alignment with the original Roman Basilica.
6:22	·	And this was done without the architect likely knowing
6:24	·	about the location or frankly the shape
6:27	·	of the original Roman Basilica.
6:29	·	And while the Basilica is the most recent rediscovery
6:32	·	in Roman London, it's far from the only one.
6:34	·	This site was carefully uncovered by archeologists
6:37	·	during the construction of a building next door.
6:39	·	But many of the ruins
6:40	·	of Roman London would've never been discovered
6:42	·	had it not been for the bombings during the blitz
6:45	·	of World War II.
6:46	·	[upbeat music]
6:51	·	We're standing in the Barbican Centre
6:52	·	and the round tower you can see
6:54	·	behind me was quite possibly the oldest piece
6:57	·	of Roman construction within Londinium.
7:00	·	The Barbican is a brutalist building complex
7:02	·	that helped to inject modern architecture
7:04	·	into the fabric of historic London.
7:06	·	During the blitz of World War II,
7:08	·	this area was heavily bombed
7:10	·	and while the entire city
7:11	·	that had been built up over the several thousand years
7:15	·	was largely destroyed,
7:16	·	what was revealed was a lot of Roman foundations
7:19	·	and the basis for the original city.
7:21	·	Before Roman Londinium,
7:22	·	there was just a fort on this location
7:24	·	and the location marked by that tower,
7:26	·	even though the tower has been built up on
7:28	·	and modified over the years,
7:30	·	is the location of the northern most corner of that fort.
7:34	·	This was far from the only place that was bombed
7:36	·	during the blitz
7:37	·	and throughout the historic core of London,
7:39	·	there were little bits and pieces that were discovered
7:42	·	as almost treasures that emerged despite all of the trauma
7:46	·	of the bombing.
7:47	·	Parts of a fresco were discovered underneath Lime Street,
7:50	·	the foundations of a massive building
7:51	·	under the Canon Street Station
7:53	·	and the Temple of Mithras,
7:54	·	which is currently on exhibition
7:56	·	under the new Bloomberg headquarters.
7:58	·	And similar to what was done with the Mithraeum,
8:01	·	where it was really showcased as part of the new building,
8:04	·	the Barbican takes that to an extreme
8:05	·	and creates an entire landscape built around the fragments
8:08	·	of its Roman past.
8:10	·	And this is really the story of London.
8:11	·	And you can see this all along the former Roman wall,
8:15	·	these different layers, the Roman layer of wall,
8:18	·	the medieval constructions both on top of
8:20	·	and incorporating the wall
8:22	·	and new buildings popping up usually
8:24	·	around it rather than on top of it, showcasing it.
8:27	·	So if you look around us
8:28	·	in these very kind of openly modernist buildings,
8:32	·	there are bits of the language of the Roman architecture
8:35	·	that originally happened here.
8:36	·	You see brick, you see arches,
8:39	·	and they're reinterpreted in a very kind of contemporary,
8:42	·	almost inverted way.
8:44	·	You see these fragments of almost like a Roman concrete.
8:47	·	So these buildings are riffing on the language
8:49	·	of Roman architecture without explicitly copying it.
8:53	·	And this is really what modernism
8:55	·	of this period was trying to do.
8:56	·	It was trying to monumentalize the past
8:59	·	and create a new language that was fitting for modern times
9:03	·	as opposed to previous neoclassical revivals
9:06	·	that were explicitly copying and mimicking the Romans.
9:09	·	The Barbican is a very modern mixed use complex
9:12	·	with schools, with housing, and art centre,
9:15	·	public space and old church.
9:17	·	And there's a very kind of modernist urban planning sort
9:19	·	of vision for rebuilding the city that its architects,
9:23	·	Chamberlin, Powell and Bon,
9:24	·	utilized to its utmost.
9:26	·	And this is really a unique space in London,
9:28	·	primarily because of the blitz.
9:30	·	The city had an opportunity
9:31	·	to build something really at the scale
9:34	·	of large modernist urban planning.
9:36	·	And the trauma of the war created in its horrific aftermath,
9:41	·	an opportunity for London to experiment a bit
9:43	·	with 20th century urban planning ideals.
9:45	·	And the Barbican represents this
9:47	·	in both its program, its style and its form.
9:50	·	This is just a small piece of London and its Roman origins.
9:54	·	Let us know what other cities we should explore
9:56	·	in comments below.