Roman London: What Is Still Standing

Published 21 September 2026 · By the Guide to London editorial team · Editor: Terje Moy

Six places in the City of London let you stand in front of something the Romans built, and four of them are free. The wall survives above ground at Tower Hill and in a gallery on Jewry Street; the amphitheatre sits under Guildhall Yard; a temple has been rebuilt in a bank's basement; a bathhouse opens on Saturdays for a booked tour; and two church crypts hold Roman floors. A walk that links them takes about three hours.

Londinium was founded in about AD 47 on two low hills on the north bank of the Thames, roughly where St Paul's Cathedral and Leadenhall Market stand today. It grew into one of the largest towns in Roman Britain and the main port of the province, and the Roman writer Tacitus described it in the second century as a place full of traders.

Almost none of it is visible, because the modern street level is about seven metres higher than the Roman one. That is the useful thing to hold in your head as you walk: you are not looking for ruins in a field, you are looking for basements, sunken gardens and the odd stretch of wall left standing where a bomb site was never built over. Our guide to the City of London as a place to walk around introduces the Square Mile; this page is the list, with what each one costs and when it is open.

The wall: where the good bits are

Between about AD 190 and AD 225 the Romans built a defensive wall around Londinium, roughly two miles long. It was one of the largest construction projects in Roman Britain, and stretches of it are still standing, usually with medieval brick and stone piled on top of the Roman work.

The giveaway is the pattern. Roman wall here is squared stone blocks laid in courses, interrupted every so often by triple rows of flat red tiles running right through the thickness of the wall. Anything above that line with a different rhythm is medieval or later. Once you have seen it at Tower Hill you will spot it everywhere.

Four places to look, all free and outdoors:

• Tower Hill. The City itself calls this the best section. It stands in the sunken garden between Tower Hill station and the Tower of London, several metres high, with the Roman courses clearly visible at the bottom.
• Cooper's Row. Two minutes north, another substantial piece stands in a courtyard off the street, with medieval arrow slits in its upper part.
• Noble Street. At the western end of the street called London Wall, low walls run alongside the pavement at basement level. This is the corner of the Roman fort, which predates the city wall and was later absorbed into it.
• St Alphage, London Wall. A garden below the highwalk near the Barbican Centre holds a tall, much-rebuilt section where Roman, medieval and Tudor work sit in one face.

None of these has opening hours, a ticket or anybody to ask. They are street furniture that happens to be eighteen hundred years old.

City Wall at Vine Street: the only bastion you can walk up to

This is the newest of the six and the one most visitors have never heard of. At 12 Jewry Street, a few minutes from Aldgate and Tower Hill, a section of the wall sits in a purpose-built basement gallery underneath an office building, together with the foundations of a bastion tower.

The wall and bastion were uncovered in 1979, during work on the buildings above. The bastion was previously unknown, and it remains the only Roman bastion in London that can be seen. The site is now a scheduled monument, and since summer 2023 the public has been able to go down and stand next to it rather than peer through a window.

Entry is free and you do not need to book. It opens from 9am to 6pm, seven days a week, and closes on bank holidays. Alongside the wall there is a display of objects found on the site, spanning two thousand years from the Roman period to the twentieth century, and there is a café at street level.

Those hours are generous by City standards. Almost everything else in the Square Mile keeps office-day hours; this one is open at nine in the morning and at half past five on a Sunday, which makes it a useful first or last stop.

The amphitheatre under Guildhall Yard

London's Roman amphitheatre was found in 1988 during excavations for the new Guildhall Art Gallery, and it opened to the public in 2002, nearly two thousand years after it last closed. What survives is a stretch of the stone entrance tunnel, the east gate and the arena walls, kept in a controlled environment about twenty feet below the modern pavement.

It is free, and it is included in the Guildhall Art Gallery's general admission ticket, which is also free. You can book online to save time or simply walk in. Opening is 10am to 5pm every day, with last entry at 4.45pm. Free introductory tours run Tuesday to Sunday at 12.15pm and 1.15pm and last 30 to 45 minutes, with no booking.

Before you go down, look at the ground in Guildhall Yard: a circle of black paving stones marks where the outer wall of the arena ran, and it is much bigger than the fragment below suggests. Our guide to Guildhall and the Roman amphitheatre covers the gallery upstairs, the medieval Great Hall and how to plan an hour and a half there.

Billingsgate Roman House and Baths: Saturdays, and you must book

The best-preserved Roman building in the City sits in the basement of an office block at 101 Lower Thames Street, and it is the hardest of the six to get into. The Corporation says the remains look as though the archaeologists have only just packed up and left. A house was built here around AD 150 and a bath suite added about a hundred years later; the site stayed in use until the end of Roman London in the early fifth century, and the remains were first uncovered in 1848.

Access is by guided tour only. Public tours run on Saturdays between April and November, booking is required in advance, and the guides are City of London Guides, the Corporation's own official guides. Tickets are £15 for an adult and £10 for a child aged 14 or under, plus a booking fee. Private tours can be arranged at other times.

Two limits matter. Children under 8 are not admitted for safety reasons, and children who are admitted must be closely supervised. And the only way in is a staircase, in three short flights of two, nine and three steps, so the site is not step-free.

The temple, in one paragraph

The London Mithraeum at 12 Walbrook is the third-century temple of Mithras, found in 1954 and now rebuilt on its own site, two floors down inside the office block that Bloomberg put up over it, with several hundred excavated objects set into a display wall on the way past. It is free, a reservation holds your time, and groups go down to the temple every twenty minutes.

We are not going to repeat the practical detail here because it has a page of its own: our guide to the London Mithraeum explains the timed entries into the temple, the week's shifting opening hours and why you should budget a full hour rather than a quick look. Read that before you go; the timing is the thing that catches people out.

Two Roman floors, in two church crypts

Both are free, both are in working churches, and both are easy to walk past.

Down in the crypt at All Hallows by the Tower, on Byward Street, part of a tessellated floor from a late second-century house survives where it was laid, still in place, with a piece of plastered wall and a small collection of Roman objects and a model of the city. The church above it is the oldest in the City. Our guide to All Hallows and the City churches has its hours and the volunteer guides who will show you round for nothing.

Underneath St Bride's, Fleet Street, a Roman pavement of about AD 180 lies behind the altar of the crypt chapel, with other Roman finds from the site displayed alongside. When the Romans established Londinium after the invasion of AD 43, they dug a substantial ditch outside the walls on this spot; a building went up later, and the surviving pavement belonged to it.

Two crypts, two floors, about twenty minutes each, and the only cost is whatever you put in the box.

The London Stone, and other things that look Roman but are not

The London Stone sits behind a grille in the wall of 111 Cannon Street, opposite the station, at about knee height. It is a lump of limestone, it has been recorded on this street since the middle ages, and it is often described as Roman. That is a reasonable guess rather than a proven fact, and the Corporation words it carefully: an ancient landmark said to mark the heart of London, with a legend that the city's fortunes depend on it staying put.

Two other cautions are worth having. The word "London Wall" is a street name, and most of the length of that street has no visible Roman wall beside it. And a great deal of what looks like ancient masonry in the City is Victorian or post-war rebuilding, often on the same line. If there is no interpretation panel, assume it is later work until you can see the tile courses.

The walk, in order

This is the order we would do it in, starting east and finishing west, which puts the two booked sites in the middle of the day and keeps the free outdoor ones for the beginning and end.

The whole thing is under three miles and all of it is flat, but it is stop-start city walking rather than a country ramble; our guide to walking in London explains when it beats the Tube. Without Billingsgate, allow about three hours plus lunch. With it, make it a Saturday and allow five.

The City Information Centre beside St Paul's Cathedral hands out a free self-guided map called Roads to Rome while stocks last, which is worth collecting on the way past. If you would rather have somebody explain it, several of the operators in our guide to walking tours in London run Roman itineraries.

What is arriving in November 2026

The best single collection of Roman London has been in storage since 2022, and it comes back on 28 November 2026 when the London Museum opens in the restored General Market at Smithfield with free galleries. Its lowest level, in vaults at the level of the Roman streets, covers prehistory and Roman London, and the museum has named a floor mosaic and a painted wall fresco going on public display for the first time, along with the writing tablets that carry some of the earliest words written in this city.

Until then the finds are scattered, which is partly why this walk is worth doing in the order above: the Mithraeum's display wall and the Vine Street gallery are currently the two best places to see everyday Roman objects from London. After November, add the museum and you have the full picture. It is a two-minute walk from St Bartholomew the Great, which was founded in 1123 and is free to enter.

If Roman Britain is the reason you came, two day trips do things London cannot. St Albans was Verulamium, with a theatre, a hypocaust and a museum of mosaics, about twenty minutes from St Pancras. Colchester was Camulodunum, the first Roman capital of Britain, and you can walk its Roman wall and see the Balkerne Gate. Both were sacked by Boudica in AD 60 or 61, along with London.

For the constitutional oddity that grew out of the Roman square and still governs it, see our guide to the City of London explained. For more free days like this one, free things to do in London, and for the eastern end of the walk, Leadenhall Market stands on the site of the Roman forum and basilica, the largest north of the Alps.

Frequently asked questions

Can you see Roman ruins in London for free?

Yes, most of them. The city wall at Tower Hill, Cooper's Row, Noble Street and St Alphage is outdoors and free at any hour. The City Wall at Vine Street, the Roman amphitheatre under Guildhall Art Gallery, the London Mithraeum and the Roman floors in the crypts of All Hallows and St Bride's are all free to enter.

Where is the best surviving piece of the Roman wall in London?

Tower Hill, in the sunken garden between the station and the Tower of London, which the City of London Corporation names as the best section. It shows the classic Roman construction of squared stone blocks with triple rows of red tiles running through, with medieval work added above.

How do you visit the Billingsgate Roman bathhouse?

Only on a booked guided tour led by City of London Guides. Public tours run on Saturdays between April and November at 101 Lower Thames Street, and cost £15 for an adult and £10 for a child of 14 or under, plus a booking fee. Children must be at least 8, and access is by stairs.

Is the London Mithraeum the same thing as the Temple of Mithras?

Yes. The temple was uncovered in 1954, moved away from its original site for decades, and has now been reconstructed close to where it was found, seven metres below street level at 12 Walbrook. The museum built around it is called London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE, and entry is free.

How long does a Roman London walk take?

About three hours for the free sites, covering under three miles of flat city streets. Add roughly an hour for the Billingsgate bathhouse tour, which only runs on Saturdays from April to November, and another hour if you go into the amphitheatre's art gallery upstairs.

Sources

• City of London - Roman ruins and where to find them (checked September 2026)
• City of London - London's Roman Amphitheatre: opening times and free entry (checked September 2026)
• City of London - Billingsgate Roman House and Baths: tours, prices and access (checked September 2026)
• City Wall at Vine Street - opening times and free entry (checked September 2026)
• City of London - Visit Guildhall Art Gallery: free admission and guided tours (checked September 2026)
• London Museum - Smithfield opening, 28 November 2026 (checked September 2026)