Our house builder won the right to lay suburbia over farmland with a snazzy new community centre. Earlier this year, I wrote of how London’s newest theatre was the by-product of a recent luxury Thames-side development. Now we get London’s newest heritage attraction as a consequence of Bloomberg’s impressive new corporate headquarters.
The Foster and Partners-designed building in the heart of the City of London has been showered with press attention, was the darling of London Open House weekend 2019 and just snagged the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize for best new building of the year. I wish I could say I was as impressed by the re-instatement of London’s mithraeum (an ancient Roman temple of the god Mithras) in its basement. Bloomberg's restoration and re-siting of the temple to its original location, surrounded by a new, small museum with free public entry, was the price for planning permission of the building above. While the new installation is far better than the open-air, back-alley site it had been mouldering in for decades, the experience didn’t live up to the slick marketing Bloomberg has been putting out about it.
In addition to a too-successful PR team, this may, in large part, be due to a combination of the people working there and poor design of the experience. I suspect the 20-somethings who welcomed us were recent graduates on rotation through the marketing department. They seemed to know little about Romans, Mithras or the temple, and had a remarkably laid back attitude to the whole thing. “Here’s the layout, explore what you want, the next show is in 5 minutes.”
At that, we rushed directly down to the temple itself, past other displays on two floors. Heavy use of the words “show” and “multi-media experience” had prepared us for something special. The newly-restored foundations do look good on first glance, with clumsy modern additions stripped out and a full-scale glass representation of Mithras slaying a bull where it would once have been on the altar. Promising. Lights went down. Some mist came up. A high-quality, “total surround” sound system gave us the audio effects of a ceremony, then the following banquet. And then the lights came up.
We were puzzled. That felt like a teaser. Where was the main event? It was back in the rooms we’d rushed through to get to the “show”, we later discovered.
The whole experience would be more meaningful if it if it worked more like a ride at Disney’s Epcot Center, with a gated flow from one section to another, learning about what you're about to see. Let the tension and the excitement build. So that when you get to the temple, you know what you're looking at and are better able to engage your imagination. I suspect that’s how it was designed, but the youngsters on the door .... by rushing you straight to the end ... didn’t deliver. So let’s spool back and consider the experience again.
You arrive at a dedicated door into a big, empty room decorated with modern, but Roman inspired, floor-to-ceiling wall murals. The long-time marketer in me sees this for what it no doubt is: a corporate entertainment space. (And why not? If you’ve got a Roman temple in your basement, incorporating it into client cocktail parties makes sense.).
But instead of letting you pass straight through this cavernous echo chamber, the youngsters on the door could give an inspiring little intro to what you’re about to see and why it’s special. They could explain the murals that celebrate with photo-realistic detail the influence Roman architecture has had on London to this day. They don’t necessarily need to be in period costume but ... why not? The cult of Mithras was primarily adopted by the army. A centurion complete with plumed helmet, introducing himself as Ulpius Silvanus, donor of the building, would have been a great touch.
Most of all, they should stop you by the case of artefacts at the top of the stairs, all unearthed in recent excavations as they prepared foundations for the new building, and explain why they’re special. The showiest finds from the temple are across town at the Museum of London. This looks like a case of seemingly inconsequential household ephemera. While you can find the information in the guide book to explain its importance (the temple was next to a river; lots of stuff washed downstream; thus the latest excavations told us more about life in the whole city), the experience would be better if someone took the time to explain it live.
From here you climb down a long flight of stairs to reach the street level of Roman London. It looks like a staircase in a sleek corporate office building. Which, of course, it is. With some music, lighting effects and information on the walls they could have given more of a sense of time travel, plunging down into history. (Only after I left did I learn that there were historic street levels noted on the walls; they are so subtle and the lighting is so low we missed them.)
You emerge into an ante-chamber where the meat of the information about the temple is conveyed. For the temple to make sense, you need to spend some time here. This is the best designed of the rooms, with video projections on the walls setting a nicely-mystical atmosphere while telling the story of the temple. The audio feed is a documentary hosted by Joanna Lumley, including various experts on the site and Mithras. Information screens on plinths let you browse through a catalogue of artefacts found here and moved to the Museum of London, photos of the original excavation, reconstructions of what the temple and its surrounding neighbourhood would have looked like, etc. Once armed with all this information, you'll have a much better idea of what you're looking at and be far more impressed at how it's come to be here.
Another rather industrial hallway takes you to the temple entrance. Not for the first time, my mind turned wistfully to the Danish museums at Jelling and Moesgaard, with their remarkable ability to use multi-media technology to bring history to life. They, doubtless, would have found a way to make this hall look like the banks of the Wallbrook, and would have given us a sense of the half-submerged, grotto-like set-up of the temple. Like all Mithraea, this one was at least partially underground to evoke a cave that's central to Mithras' story.
If you've taken the time to pay attention to the artefacts and information before this point, then the short sound and light experience at the temple makes more sense. There's only one source for what might have happened here (a 4th century Egyptian papyrus), so the fact that you're essentially eavesdropping on the original Latin ceremony is rather cool. Still, I wanted more. Instead of reconstructing the temple on the computer screens outside, why not project walls and people against the mist to bring it all to life in situ?
Big picture: the London Mithraeum is surprisingly old school for a brand new cultural experience. The Danish museums mentioned above, the Dutch National Maritime Museum and England's own Mary Rose Museum are all great examples of people using technology to bring history to life and make artefacts more relevant. The Mithraeum could have so easily been the same. Sure, it's the quid pro quo afterthought to the building above, and it's free, so perhaps we shouldn't expect much. But given that the whole site cost £1 billion, has state-of-the-art environmental systems and is sheathed in 600 tonnes of bronze imported from Japan, a bit more investment in user experience doesn't seem like a big ask. As it is, I can't see many beyond true devotees of ancient Roman history getting too excited about this.
Why should an insignificant temple to a niche god be worth your time, anyway? Because Mithras has a direct connection to our world today. In the first century, jaded Romans bored with their state religion were dabbling in new "mystery cults". Three gods were running neck-and-neck for dominance on this scene: Mithras, Isis and Jesus. How the followers of the latter won the race, consigning the others to footnotes in history (while borrowing attributes of their worship) is not only relevant to anyone interested in Christianity today, but gives fascinating insight into why organisations succeed and fail. There's an intriguing theory that Mithraism, by being a cult limited to men and mostly confined to the military, put itself out of business with its exclusivity. While Christianity, by not only targeting but encouraging women and slaves amongst its early followers, hit upon a winning bottom-up growth strategy.
This is, sadly, not something you'll learn much about when you visit the London Mithraeum. But maybe it's enough to tempt you to check it out. If you're in the area, it's certainly worth half an hour of your time to take advantage of a free ticket. You will need to get one in advance: book here to do so.
The Foster and Partners-designed building in the heart of the City of London has been showered with press attention, was the darling of London Open House weekend 2019 and just snagged the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize for best new building of the year. I wish I could say I was as impressed by the re-instatement of London’s mithraeum (an ancient Roman temple of the god Mithras) in its basement. Bloomberg's restoration and re-siting of the temple to its original location, surrounded by a new, small museum with free public entry, was the price for planning permission of the building above. While the new installation is far better than the open-air, back-alley site it had been mouldering in for decades, the experience didn’t live up to the slick marketing Bloomberg has been putting out about it.
At that, we rushed directly down to the temple itself, past other displays on two floors. Heavy use of the words “show” and “multi-media experience” had prepared us for something special. The newly-restored foundations do look good on first glance, with clumsy modern additions stripped out and a full-scale glass representation of Mithras slaying a bull where it would once have been on the altar. Promising. Lights went down. Some mist came up. A high-quality, “total surround” sound system gave us the audio effects of a ceremony, then the following banquet. And then the lights came up.
We were puzzled. That felt like a teaser. Where was the main event? It was back in the rooms we’d rushed through to get to the “show”, we later discovered.
The whole experience would be more meaningful if it if it worked more like a ride at Disney’s Epcot Center, with a gated flow from one section to another, learning about what you're about to see. Let the tension and the excitement build. So that when you get to the temple, you know what you're looking at and are better able to engage your imagination. I suspect that’s how it was designed, but the youngsters on the door .... by rushing you straight to the end ... didn’t deliver. So let’s spool back and consider the experience again.
You arrive at a dedicated door into a big, empty room decorated with modern, but Roman inspired, floor-to-ceiling wall murals. The long-time marketer in me sees this for what it no doubt is: a corporate entertainment space. (And why not? If you’ve got a Roman temple in your basement, incorporating it into client cocktail parties makes sense.).
Most of all, they should stop you by the case of artefacts at the top of the stairs, all unearthed in recent excavations as they prepared foundations for the new building, and explain why they’re special. The showiest finds from the temple are across town at the Museum of London. This looks like a case of seemingly inconsequential household ephemera. While you can find the information in the guide book to explain its importance (the temple was next to a river; lots of stuff washed downstream; thus the latest excavations told us more about life in the whole city), the experience would be better if someone took the time to explain it live.
You emerge into an ante-chamber where the meat of the information about the temple is conveyed. For the temple to make sense, you need to spend some time here. This is the best designed of the rooms, with video projections on the walls setting a nicely-mystical atmosphere while telling the story of the temple. The audio feed is a documentary hosted by Joanna Lumley, including various experts on the site and Mithras. Information screens on plinths let you browse through a catalogue of artefacts found here and moved to the Museum of London, photos of the original excavation, reconstructions of what the temple and its surrounding neighbourhood would have looked like, etc. Once armed with all this information, you'll have a much better idea of what you're looking at and be far more impressed at how it's come to be here.
If you've taken the time to pay attention to the artefacts and information before this point, then the short sound and light experience at the temple makes more sense. There's only one source for what might have happened here (a 4th century Egyptian papyrus), so the fact that you're essentially eavesdropping on the original Latin ceremony is rather cool. Still, I wanted more. Instead of reconstructing the temple on the computer screens outside, why not project walls and people against the mist to bring it all to life in situ?
Big picture: the London Mithraeum is surprisingly old school for a brand new cultural experience. The Danish museums mentioned above, the Dutch National Maritime Museum and England's own Mary Rose Museum are all great examples of people using technology to bring history to life and make artefacts more relevant. The Mithraeum could have so easily been the same. Sure, it's the quid pro quo afterthought to the building above, and it's free, so perhaps we shouldn't expect much. But given that the whole site cost £1 billion, has state-of-the-art environmental systems and is sheathed in 600 tonnes of bronze imported from Japan, a bit more investment in user experience doesn't seem like a big ask. As it is, I can't see many beyond true devotees of ancient Roman history getting too excited about this.
Why should an insignificant temple to a niche god be worth your time, anyway? Because Mithras has a direct connection to our world today. In the first century, jaded Romans bored with their state religion were dabbling in new "mystery cults". Three gods were running neck-and-neck for dominance on this scene: Mithras, Isis and Jesus. How the followers of the latter won the race, consigning the others to footnotes in history (while borrowing attributes of their worship) is not only relevant to anyone interested in Christianity today, but gives fascinating insight into why organisations succeed and fail. There's an intriguing theory that Mithraism, by being a cult limited to men and mostly confined to the military, put itself out of business with its exclusivity. While Christianity, by not only targeting but encouraging women and slaves amongst its early followers, hit upon a winning bottom-up growth strategy.
This is, sadly, not something you'll learn much about when you visit the London Mithraeum. But maybe it's enough to tempt you to check it out. If you're in the area, it's certainly worth half an hour of your time to take advantage of a free ticket. You will need to get one in advance: book here to do so.
