Londinium Drawn by Rocío Espín Piñar

9 comments

1. Yes, there are still parts of the old Roman wall, best examples of which are out near Tower Hill and also close to the Barbican. You can roughly trace the course of the wall around the City of London by checking every place with “gate” in the the name… Aldgate, Moorgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate, etc
   If you’re in the Cannon St area, the Bloomberg building has an original Roman temple of Mithras in the basement which is open to the public

2. Before they realised that North of the river > South of the river

3. I can see my house!

4. Is it just the perspective or was it a lot hillier than it is now?

5. If anyone asks again why is London where it is, I’m going to show them this illustration.

6. I went to visit the Mythraeum the other day (it’s under the current Bloomberg building) – would it be on this somewhere ?

7. The little harbour on the north side of the river in the image is the end of the Walbrook river, which is currently underground and exits into the Thames just to the western side of Cannon Street station (it runs past the Mithras Temple remains which is free to visit in the Bloomberg Building).

   The river further up the image to the west of the city wall is the Fleet, which exits into the Thames roughly where Blackfriars station is now. It runs under Farringdon Street.

   The image would be depicting Londinium around the 2nd century AD, so about 57-157 years after it was founded.

8. the first bend upstream is where the Anglo-Saxons built linundenwic. If you go to ‘The strand’ in london, you are actually going to where there was beach at the bend of this river. In modern german, a strand is still the cognate term for a beach.

9. the first bend upstream is where the Anglo-Saxons built linundenwic. If you go to ‘The strand’ in london, you are actually going to where there was beach at the bend of this river. In modern german, a strand is still the cognate term for a beach.

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