Thanks, Ben Aaronovitch! Before going on holiday I’d devoured Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, a fun paranormal crime series set in London that combines magic, police mystery, humour and English history. In the latest book, he mentions the London Mithraeum, or The Temple of Mithras, in London. I’d never heard of it but his information was correct.

The London Mithraeum is a small free museum in the basement of the Bloomberg building in Central London (tube: Cannon Street). We caught the tube there on Tuesday morning prior to heading to Leigh-on-Sea to visit family. I’d booked us tickets for 10am when it opens. (You don’t have to book but there’s. Limit to the number of people who can go in at once so I booked to avoid disappointment.)

The museum is small and set over three floors. The first floor has a contemporary exhibition space and is also where you get the introduction and orientation. There’s also a wall of artefacts that were dug up from the site. They’re arranged in an attractive way and there are tablets available to find out what the objects are.

We went down the stairs to the next level. White lines and text on the black wall indicate where the level of the street was at different times so by the time we got down to the second level we were about three to five metres down.

This next level had a continuously running audio talking about the temple and the devotees of Mithras – all narrated by Joanna Lumley. In addition there were three casts, each one above a touch screen that provided information relating to the cast, so there was one about the central motif of Mithras slaughtering the bull, a bust of Mithras, and a frieze from inside the temple.

After reading and listening to all that it was then time for the main event. Access to the temple ruins themselves happens every twenty minutes so we were the first to go in at 10:20. Down more stairs and into a dimly lit room.

The temple was active from 240 AD to 500ish AD and then fell into disuse when the Romans did a runner (I think it was also converted to a temple to Bacchus at some point later too). Then over the centuries it was lost underground. Bombing in World War II levelled the area and the temple was discovered in the clean-up afterwards.

The temple ruins were moved 100m down the road and left out in the open with little interpretation, and then when Bloomberg planned to build on the original site, they took the opportunity to move the ruins back to where the temple originally stood. Pretty cool.

Inside the room you’re treated to an audio and light show, which very quickly runs through an approximation of the ritual. The temple had eight columns on each side (16 in total) and while they weren’t there any longer, they’d done this neat trick with the light where they suspended the capstones from the ceiling and shone the light from above, giving the ghostly illusion of the temples. 

The presentation was only about 5–10 minutes and then the lights came up. We then walked around the perimeter to see this small temple from all sides before leaving and going back upstairs.

All up we were in there for about half an hour and they recommend 45 minutes. It’s a great quick visit, well targeted to audience and FREE! I’m really glad we went.

Also outside was a cool sculpture representing the ancient Walbrook River and a rainbow painted onto the footpath in celebration of Pride Month.