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Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall
- PaulRobinson 11mo agoThe Museum of London site (now closed as they prepare to move to their new site, coincidentally near the AWS HQ), and there was a window you could look down on part of the wall, which you can also see from the other side of the road near Barbican. I won't give directions, as that seems futile anywhere near Barbican, but I had only just thought about how weird it is that there is wall at Tower Hill, and wall at Barbican - they can't be the same run of wall as it was built, can they? That'd be immense...
- defrost 11mo agoFrom the article: London's original wall was 2 miles long, 6 metres high and almost 3 metres thick at its base with a link to a graphic map and guide: https://colat.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/London-Wall-Walk-guide.pdf https://colat.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/London-Wall-... that states it ran from the Tower of London to the Museum in the Barbican.
- emmelaich 11mo agoThere is a London Wall Walk, starting at the Tower of London. Text copied from the plaques at the postern: (thanks Google Lens) >The London Wall Walk follows the original line of the City Wall for much of its length, from the royal fortress of the Tower of London to the Museum of London, situated in the modern high-rise development of the Barbican. Between these two landmarks the Wall Walk passes surviving pieces of the Wall visible to the public and the sites of the gates now buried deep beneath the City streets. It also passes close to eight of the surviving forty-one City churches. The Walk is 134 miles (2.8km) long and is marked by twenty-one panels which can be followed in either direction. Completion of the Walk will take between one and two hours. Wheelchairs can reach most individual sites although access is difficult at some points.
- defrost 11mo ago> The Walk is 134 miles (2.8km) Google Lens appears to have missed the point here.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoGolf clap.
- mock-possum 11mo ago> The Walk is 134 miles (2.8km) long and … Completion of the Walk will take between one and two hours Sorry, this is suggesting I can walk over a hundred miles in 1-2 hours???
- lmm 11mo agoIf you look at the actual document it's 1¾ miles, which seems to have been incorrectly OCRed or copy-pasted.
- tialaramex 11mo agoThe new Museum's site also has a very cool view through a window, but it's a view of the passing trains [underground], because historically that building (one of London's markets) had a freight service and of course there's no room to move a railway line under London so even though it hadn't needed a freight service for decades the passenger service over the same rails still exists and you will be able to wave to surprised (if they haven't taken that route before) passengers from inside the museum. A friend lucked into (there's literally a lottery for popular sites) tickets for the new site in Open House London 2024 and the window existed but wasn't really set up for tourists yet of course.
- tobylane 11mo agoI went on that Open House tour, and they said the window view is a secret until opening day. They've told contractors not to take personal photos. For context, this line is Thameslink, just south of Farringdon, on the east (heading south) side.
- tialaramex 11mo agoI'm terrible at keeping secrets so, it was probably a bad idea to let me go on the tour, or, perhaps we should try to have fewer secrets so that I'd remember ?
- RobotToaster 11mo agoSeems like a missed opportunity to have a tube station inside the museum.
- tialaramex 11mo agoWell, not quite, these aren't tube trains, they're ThamesLink trains, so it would be a mainline railway station, not a tube station, albeit underground. And they already have more appropriate stops in London.
- vr46 11mo agoI used to eat lunch at Bastion 14, although you can't get anywhere near it now. There was plenty of old wall at Moorgate that was very open access.
- xnx 11mo agoArchitectural Digest has a good video of the Roman Wall and other Ancient Roman history in london: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_-JnvuAeVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_-JnvuAeVI
- tom_alexander 11mo ago> ground level then was a few metres lower than now What?! That's huge. What happened?
- gassi 11mo agoBefore industrial demolition was common, old buildings would be town down and material repurposed for new constructions, build on top of existing foundations and rubble. Do this enough over the centuries and your city will slowly rise in height.
- mr_toad 11mo agoIf anyone’s ever in Barcelona I recommend checking out the history museum, which is literally built on top of some Roman and medieval ruins. You can descend into the basement to see the excavated remains of the foundations of Roman buildings that had been levelled and built on top of.
- trenchpilgrim 11mo agoEvery time a building fell apart due to earthquake, fire, flood, war, abandonment- the good material was taken for reuse and the bad material became rubble which was often smoothed out and used as a foundation.
- feurio 11mo agoShoes. All the way down. ;-)
- dboreham 11mo agoTakes me back. I don't think we have the number of shoe shops that used to dominate the high street and at the time I assumed inspired Adams.
- shagie 11mo agoSeattle: https://undergroundtour.com https://undergroundtour.com Buried ships of San Francisco - https://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/buried-ships-of-san-francisco.htm https://www.nps.gov/safr/learn/historyculture/buried-ships-o... https://www.baylightscharters.com/bay-lights-charters-blog/what-lies-beneath-the-ships-buried-under-san-francisco https://www.baylightscharters.com/bay-lights-charters-blog/w... > Delgado received his first big assignment back in 1978 while working for the National Park Service: excavating and studying the remains of the Niantic, one of the first whaling vessels that brought gold-seekers to the area. It had been discovered near the Transamerica Pyramid at the corner of Clay and Sansome streets. After being left behind during the Gold Rush, the ship had been repurposed to serve as a storeship, saloon, and hotel until its demise in an 1851 fire. Consider that https://maps.app.goo.gl/tYjaESQXss2KhHXQA https://maps.app.goo.gl/tYjaESQXss2KhHXQA used to be sea level. As mentioned else comment, things were torn down and that served as the foundation for the next building.
- ipnon 11mo agoNot bad engineering to make it through a handful of civil wars, a Blitz, and a couple thousand V-1 rockets mostly intact. You have to wonder how long all the steel and concrete that's been laid around the Thames from our civilization will last.
- ahazred8ta 11mo agoThere's a Templar fortress in Lebanon that was occupied by militants a few years ago. 800 years old and still being used for its intended purpose.
- 2b3a51 11mo agoThere is a Templar church in London off Fleet Street as well, and again, being used as intended. Plus the crypt of St Bride's has a Roman pavement to look at. Nice and quiet down there.
- willvarfar 11mo agoMost of the wall has been plundered for stone and to make way for new development over the past millennium. Its not conflict that has destroyed 2 miles of a 6m high 3m thick wall, it's peace :)
- jen729w 11mo agoFor more of this sort of thing, check out the Old Structures Engineering blog. Don does a post a day, day in, day out -- so obviously some are more detailed than others. I enjoy having it in my feed. Recent examples: https://oldstructures.com/2025/10/24/not-quite-a-tunnel/ https://oldstructures.com/2025/10/24/not-quite-a-tunnel/ https://oldstructures.com/2025/10/21/relieved/ https://oldstructures.com/2025/10/21/relieved/
- hodgesrm 11mo agoFor another interesting mix of new and ancient, check out the Serdica metro station in Sofia, Bulgaria. [0] It's fully inside an excavated Roman-era ruin. Very cool! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdika_Metro_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serdika_Metro_Station
- trenchpilgrim 11mo agoNote this is about the City of London, an entity much smaller and older than the modern city known as London. It's land area is about 3 km^2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London Title should probably read "the City of London" rather than "London".
- EFreethought 11mo agoI had a hard time remembering that distinction when I first read about the "City of London". Here is the US, the "city of Chicago" is the same as "Chicago".
- dboreham 11mo agoSee also: The Loop
- wat10000 11mo agoNew York is an obvious example of two entities of the same name, with the “City of” version being a small part of the larger version. It’s just on a much bigger scale.
- onionisafruit 11mo agoNew Orleans is a city, but City of New Orleans is a train
- zeristor 11mo agoI worked for Lloyd’s Register for a spell, and their cafeteria was where the Vine Street building is, just got used to eating lunch there by the bits of wall everyday for a few years.
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- MrGreedy 11mo ago> That car park in image [4] is wild. The juxtaposition of a mundane parking Meh. Let me introduce you to Colchester, the oldest recorded town in the UK. The wall behind the carpark you see here is the original Roman wall (circa 65 AD) with modern brick on top... (The tourist sign is in the foreground if you zoom in). The walls were built after the city was sacked by the rebel queen Boudica in 60 AD. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.887807,0.9045163,3a,81.3y,1.25h,82.18t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sDxPPlJK2udqIpmoC_EY3bQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D7.816955277001412%26panoid%3DDxPPlJK2udqIpmoC_EY3bQ%26yaw%3D1.2510870062795534!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.887807,0.9045163,3a,81.3y,...? Oh, and if you rotate the streetview 180 degrees, between the trees you can make out the ruins of St Botolph's Priory, sacked during the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 AD. It's a nice place for a lunchtime picnic.
- dghf 11mo ago> Let me introduce you to Colchester, the oldest recorded town in the UK. And a candidate for the location of Camelot, thanks to its Roman name, Camulodunum.
- flir 11mo agoShow 'em the Hole in the Wall.
- Fluorescence 11mo ago> the oldest recorded town in the UK It's a bit of an "oldest pub" claim and the council has since upgraded it to "Britain's first City" after getting city status in 2022! It's MP called it "the most arrogant council in Britain" which we can add to it's claims for fame. There were millions of Britons and plenty of other town-worthy settlements with 1000s of years of human activity but they were mostly proto-literate. There had been 100s of years of trade with Greeks/Romans but pre-conquest writing is imperious enough to refer to land masses or at best the Oppidum (town/stronghold/capital) of a Celtic king but not deign to record the local name. The key for Colchester was being where someone who could write cared enough to do so. The Roman invasions started in the South East and the Catuvellauni led the resistance. Once defeated the Romans set up a fortress on the site of their capital Camulodunum later turning it into the official colonial capital. Now that it's Roman, it becomes acceptable enough for Pliny to write down it's name. My best effort to spite Colchester City Council is with coin inscriptions. Celtish Kings with sufficient Roman influence e.g. Gaulish tribes that had migrated, would mint coins with latin script and here is one with that refers to the capital where it was minted 100s of years before Pliny: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1988-0627-167 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1988-0627-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calleva_Atrebatum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calleva_Atrebatum It's the capital of the Atrebates, Calleva Atrebatum. The oppidum of a king minting coins is a good enough to be a "town" for an HN comment. Congratulations to Silchester in Hampshire!
- urban_winter 11mo agoIf you're in the vicinity of the road called London Wall (where the car park referenced in the article is) then it's only a short walk to London's Roman amphitheatre [1]. It doesn't seem to be very well known but is quite impressive. It's one of very many bits of Roman history entombed in basements of London buildings. The Merrill Lynch Financial Centre also has a big chunk of Roman stuff in the basement - but there's no public access and no access to the walkway around the ruins even if you're an employee. [1] https://www.thecityofldn.com/directory/londons-roman-amphitheatre/ https://www.thecityofldn.com/directory/londons-roman-amphith...
- zeristor 11mo agoNot London Wall related but the London Bloomberg HQ when it was built reconstructed the Temple of Mithras at the actual position, quite deep underground.
- smikhanov 11mo agoI can only imagine how many similar places to see ancient ruins in everyday context are in Rome. Or Athens.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoOr many places in Europe, except where World Wars demolished them with artillery. Edit: or Asia and Russia and South America...
- dmazin 11mo agoOne more strange place: the barbershop in Leadenhall Market. You can see the wall right in the barbershop. In fact, this wall drove their rent higher and eventually they closed. (Forgive the sob story, but the barber was amazing, and they closed down + fired everyone with no notice to customers. I have not been able to track him down since!)
- fusslo 11mo agoNevermind the wall, this person's blog dates back to 2002. I think I have a blog/digital journal from around 2007 or so, but with HUGE gaps (years) where I lost interest. Pretty incredible in its own right
- em3rgent0rdr 11mo agoBoth infrastructures are made to last.
- kxcrossing 11mo agoLooks like 2007 shows a 404, so maybe there are a few tiny gaps. Still, over 23 years of constant blogging is pretty awesome indeed. It’s in stark contrast to blogspot pages I’ve found that stopped in 2011
- hinkley 11mo agoI found that I generally ran out of things to talk about after a couple of years. I have more hobbies now so perhaps I could go a lot longer, but talking about those would make a feed nobody wants to follow.
- zby 11mo agoI have one current blog, three blogs that are still hosted and one that is only in Internet Archive :)
- JoeDaDude 11mo agoOn the subject of walls... Cortez reported seeing a wall blocking off an entire valley on his way to Tenochtitlan. One source reported the wall was 6 miles long, and yet it seems to have disappeared without a trace. And yet, Both the London Wall and Hadrian's Wall, though much older still have surviving ruins to this day.
- indoordin0saur 11mo agoI wonder if they exaggerated things to make their conquest seem even more impressive
- IAmBroom 11mo agoFrankly, they didn't much need to do so. The empire they encountered was epic and amazing.
- hinkley 11mo agoCut stone is worth stealing to make new buildings. In 1491 the point is made that the Inca believed that they had been beaten by superior gods and so they bowed out. But he doesn’t really talk about what happened to the Aztecs. You steal stone from structures you don’t care about anymore. Didn’t Mexico see more intensive colonization? Settlers would care less about existing structures. Maybe the Spaniards built missions out of the wall.
- lukecarr 11mo agoIn Exeter[1], we still have roughly 70% of our Roman wall[2], and there is even a pedestrian footbridge over a road where part of the "bridge" involves walking along the top of the wall's remains. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isca_Dumnoniorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isca_Dumnoniorum [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_city_walls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_city_walls
- ashergill 11mo agoThere's also a bit of it in the WeWork on Leadenhall Street: https://www.wework.com/en-GB/buildings/77-leadenhall-street--london https://www.wework.com/en-GB/buildings/77-leadenhall-street-... Otherwise not a very good WeWork.
- armoredkitten 11mo agoI went to the UK this summer and followed this guide for seeing the various sections of the wall: https://londonmymind.com/london-wall-walk/ https://londonmymind.com/london-wall-walk/ Unfortunately it didn't mention the section in that carpark! But I can attest that the section behind the Leonardo Royal Hotel is amazing. I also recommend the tower remains on the Barbican estate (and really, just wander around the Barbican for a while, it's a wild place in general).
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