Explore London’s history in rediscovered underground vaults

Londinium: The Making of a Roman City is a free to visit exhibit, allowing visitors to explore a network of hidden underground vaults to learn about how London came to be the place it is today.

Opening in spring 2027, the exhibit will showcase unseen objects from the Bloomberg Collection of Roman artefacts, to bring the life and stories of the first Londoners to life.

Using sensory storytelling, dynamic projection and soundscapes, visitors will be transported into a turbulent Roman London.

Director of London Museum, Sharon Ament, 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.”

What can visitors expect to see?

Some of the collection’s most culturally significant objects include: 

• Roman wax writing tablets etched with London’s earliest surviving voices.
• An infant’s feeding bottle, offering rare insight into childcare and family life.
• A coin from the reign of Emperor Nero to show how Londinium became connected to the Roman Empire.
• The earliest example of Eurasian cockroach eggs, which had been discovered inside a Roman bakery oven.

Unearthed during excavations at Bloomberg’s headquarters between 2012 and 2014, the display offers the most comprehensive snapshot of early Roman Britain ever discovered.

Gifted to London Museum by Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2025, the 14,000 items form the largest collection of small finds recovered from a single site.

What are the lost vaults?

The vaults were uncovered in 2019 during renovations to Smithfield’s Victorian General Market, when builders broke through a wall and discovered an 800sqm tunnel network. It is thought to have originally provided storage for the market and nearby railway.

London Museum will open to the public on 28th November 2026, with the Londinium exhibit opening next year. The collection covers more than 450,000 years of history with approximately seven million objects on show for visitors.

The new museum is said to have the largest collection of artefacts in the world relating to an urban space.