Alistair Hardaker | Image: CGI of the Vaults © Secchi Smith London Museum
The 800sqm underground network of vaults, discovered in 2019, will be host to an exhibition exploring the story of Londinium
London Museum has announced the first exhibition to take place in underground vaults, rediscovered during the renovation of its new home.
The museum will reopen at the Smithfield’s Victorian General Market building next year concluding a £437m development project. In 2019, during the early phase of project, a contractor accidentally uncovered the 800sqm underground network of subterranean brick vaults.
Thought to have been used as storage units by the market and nearby railway, the long-abandoned spaces have now been transformed, and will host ‘Londinium: the making of a Roman city’.
The free exhibition opening in spring 2027 will shed light on the stories of the very first Londoners. Previously unseen objects from the Bloomberg Collection of Roman artefacts will be displayed alongside dynamic projection and spatial soundscapes.
Among the objects going on display for the first time are examples from Britain’s most important collection of Roman wax writing tablets, etched with London’s earliest surviving voices; an infant’s feeding bottle, a coin from the reign of the Emperor Nero, and Britain’s earliest known example of Eurasian cockroach eggs.
Jackie Keily, lead curator of Londinium, said: “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.”
The exhibition will sit alongside a broader story about Roman London told in the museum’s permanent galleries, exploring the Great Fire and the Blitz, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Sharon Ament, Director, London Museum, said: “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.”
London Museum opens to the public on 28 November 2026. Londinium: the making of a Roman city will open in Spring 2027.
