London Museum Unveils Roman London Exhibition in Rediscovered Underground Vaults
Free exhibition 'Londinium: the making of a Roman city' opens Spring 2027, showcasing artefacts from the Bloomberg Collection.
By Oliver Hargreaves
••4 min read
AI
Close-up of Roman artefacts, including wax writing tablets and a coin, displayed in a dimly lit underground vault.
The London Museum will open its newly rediscovered underground vaults to the public in Spring 2027 with a free exhibition titled 'Londinium: the making of a Roman city', showcasing artefacts from the Bloomberg Collection.
The London Museum has announced its inaugural exhibition, 'Londinium: the making of a Roman city', which will be held in its recently rediscovered network of underground vaults. Opening in Spring 2027, this free exhibition aims to illuminate the lives of London's earliest inhabitants.
Visitors will encounter unseen highlights from the renowned Bloomberg Collection of Roman artefacts. Through sensory-rich storytelling, dynamic projection, and spatial soundscapes, the exhibition will immerse attendees in the turbulent first 50 years of Roman London, a period of trade, conflict, and opportunity.
This exhibition follows the museum's grand opening in Smithfield on 28 November 2026, marking one of the most significant cultural redevelopment projects in a decade. The exhibition is a collaboration with experience design agency Journey, known for their work on productions like War Horse and the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.
Drawing on over a decade of research into the Bloomberg Collection and grounded in archaeological evidence, 'Londinium' will recreate the everyday experiences of ordinary people in this frontier settlement as it evolved into a thriving urban centre.
Among the artefacts displayed for the first time are some of Britain's most important Roman wax writing tablets, an infant's feeding bottle offering insights into childcare, a coin from the reign of Emperor Nero demonstrating Londinium's rapid connection to the Roman Empire, and the earliest known example of Eurasian cockroach eggs found in a Roman bakery oven.
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"The Bloomberg Collection is an extraordinary discovery that has helped us build a picture of life in Roman London like never before. Protected by the waterlogged soil from which they were unearthed, this time capsule has preserved artefacts that would otherwise have been lost. From these objects, we can begin to picture the intimate and everyday experiences of Londinium’s ancient inhabitants. This was a time of loss, upheaval and hardship but also hope, opportunity and new beginnings."
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"When we rediscovered the vaults, we were determined to open them up. They are so specific, so evocative, so mysterious, we saw their potential straight away. So it makes me really rather pleased that the first exhibition inside them will be about the Londoners who created Londinium, with real artefacts from their lives from one of London’s most significant recent archaeological excavations."
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"Since their discovery beneath the Bloomberg building, we have always felt privileged to care for these remarkable artefacts. In gifting the collection to London Museum, we aimed to preserve its access for future generations. Londinium builds on more than a decade of research and conservation to bring the stories of London’s first citizens to life in a dynamic new cultural space – a fitting first chapter for this future home of London’s rich history."
Unearthed between 2012 and 2014 during excavations at Bloomberg's European headquarters, the Bloomberg Collection comprises over 14,000 artefacts, gifted to the London Museum in 2025 by Bloomberg Philanthropies. It is the largest assemblage of small finds from a single London archaeological site and the museum's largest archive acquisition.
The lost vaults were rediscovered in 2019 during the museum’s decade-long renovation of the Victorian General Market in Smithfield. The 800sqm underground network, thought to have been used for storage, has been transformed into a new setting for exhibitions and events.
The London Museum opens to the public on 28 November 2026, with the 'Londinium' exhibition set to launch in Spring 2027. Further insights from experts studying the collection will be available on the free arts and culture app, Bloomberg Connects.
