London has a Roman Amphitheater: a tour of Guildhall Art Gallery

The more I complete off of this 101 Free Things to do in London list, the more glad I am to have found it. There are so many things to do in London once you cross off all the popular sights! And better yet, I'm realizing how easy it would be to tailor a trip to any set of interests. Get off the beaten path!

I hadn't heard of the Guildhall Art Gallery, despite its rather royal ties (the Queen has her own bathroom off the main hall) and ancient history hidden in the basement. It showed up twice on the 101 List: my challenges (which I chose to accept) were to see a Rossetti painting and the ancient Roman amphitheater.

I happened to visit on a Saturday, when the gallery offers a few free introductory tours of the space. Suuuuuper handy as I wouldn't have realized the Rossetti painting is within ten steps of top of the main hall staircase. The guide also told the group why the painting is significant, and pointed out mistakes and factoids about it. I always feel I gain a lot from a tour, and the fact that it's free is a nice bonus.

Anyway, here's the Rossetti that I would have otherwise missed!

We also saw a property deed signed by Shakespeare, as well as one of the original copies of his complete printed works. 

Finally, the tour ended in the middle of what was once the Roman amphitheater in the city of Londinium, circa 70 A.D. I had no idea this even existed (and I'm a geek about ancient history)! The foundations of the main walls are still there, but the structure had long been demolished and covered by a couple thousand years of dirt and new buildings.

The story goes, when the city of London started excavations to rebuild to gallery in the early 90s, archaeologists realized they were literally in the center of the amphitheater, which they'd been trying to find for decades. So, because of its historical significance, the gallery had to completely scratch the original blueprints, and figure out a way to build around the ancient structure. So, in essence, there is a one-story slice of ancient earth preserved between the new floors of the Guildhall Art Gallery. They carved around it, even preserving the gravel and dirt! You can walk where gladiators and emperors entered the archway, and see how the Romans engineered underground water pumps to keep the ground from getting too swampy. Crazy!

A final neat touch is in the square out front of the gallery: the black stone line in this photo traces the outline of the original amphitheater. An homage to the structure and the history. I love stuff like that.

Also, this painting of Clytemnestra is intense! She just murdered Agamemnon and looks like she's ready to jump off the canvas to give stitches to snitches, so don't tell her I told you!

"Best cure for a headache? Decapitation." 

The Museum of London explains the history of London for those of us who aren't that in to history

Alternate title: "The Museum of London: a museum so nice I've been there twice (in the last week!)."

As prompted by this article of 101 Free Things to Do in London, I stopped by the Museum of London last week and was thoroughly impressed by how in-depth its displays are. I couldn't wait to get back.

That day I only had about an hour to spend perusing, and I made it through half of the first floor, which is roughly through to the Bronze and Iron ages (right around the turn of BC to AD, even though no one knew that at the time). The Romans hadn't even invaded yet!

These are axe handles, but to me the look like bike seats. So naturally, I took a photo.

And as a special treat (or perhaps a daily occurrence? It was there again today!) there was a table staffed by volunteer experts. I held an oil-pot that was 2,000 years old! It was made 2,000 years ago, sat in the ground for 1,980 years, and then it somehow found itself in my grubby little hand. Too. cool. (They also had a copper ring, complete with ring finger bone, on display. I did *not* hold that.)

Today I found myself in the area again, and with a lot more time on my hands. Starting where I left off, I meandered my way through history. I'm admittedly terrible with dates and history, but this museum really worked for me. I could easily follow where I was in time, and since the location didn't change I found myself filling in several gaps in my mental timeline of world and European history.

For example, I learned...

• after the Roman occupation the area around London (Londinium) was abandoned and fell into ruin. 
• The plague killed one in five people in London, and the remaining people tried to fend off germs with "nice smells" like lavender, since they thought the disease was carried by "bad smells."
• There was a British civil war. 
• The country ousted the monarchy for ten years in the late 1500s. Then they brought it back. 
• The fire of 1666 was devastating. And huge. And burned for five days. Can you even imagine?!
• Also, WWI and WWII were Much Bigger Deals in the UK. The longer I'm here, and travelling within Europe, the more I'm sure that will really set in. 

Along with the history, there are several interactive displays, making the museum excellent for families with kids. You can literally touch, listen, watch, even smell certain parts of history. (The smell is just the lavender, nothing gross!) The movies are good lengths, and don't require very much concentration to follow (one is just clips from the 1920s-40s with music and captions). There are also mini scavenger hunts and some computer games with kid-friendly narrators. 

As I learn more about London, I bet I'll find myself returning to different rooms at the Museum of London, because each room has so much information to take in. Wandering through took at least three hours (for me, that was over two visits), and after a while I wasn't reading much, just scanning headlines and skimming paragraphs that piqued my interest. 

It definitely helped me appreciate more of the history of my adopted city, and I'd recommend it for adults and kids alike! 

Big, plastic boards with items to find around the prehistoric exhibit.

Looped video on the wall in the first exhibit:

Computers with more information:

Comic book-esque history of the Romans in London:

Recreation of housing in the 800s (fully explorable)

"The first map of London"

This cascade of TV screens alternated between synchronized video / text

Platform 9 3/4

I found this article with 101 free things to do in London, and I'm going to check off two each week I'm in town. Ambitious? Maybe! Too ambitious? Also a maybe! But after one whole week I am still on track. Yesterday I visited the Museum of London (proper post later), and today was...

Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter at King's Cross Station! 

Because we're nerdy like that :)

They have prop scarfs for each Hogwarts house (I chose Ravenclaw, though I'll admit I'm not actually sure which house I'd be) and two very enthusiastic, probably-getting-paid-minimum-wage staff members to help you stage photos that look like you're running or jumping through to the platform. You can see one of them throwing Britton's scarf in the last photo. It's all free! You can, of course, buy your "professional" photo at the gift shop located just steps away for the low-low price of £9.50 (currently $13.75). Thanks but no thanks, FREE is just fine with me!

Wouldn't mind running into Neville these days, either. Mmmmmmm...