Billingsgate Roman House & Baths – Visit London's Roman Ruins

Q: Which is the closest train station?

The nearest station is Monument , which connects with the Circle and District lines. It only takes three minutes to walk to Billingsgate Roman House and Baths.

Useful things to know before your visit

Address: Billingsgate Roman House and Baths, 101 Lower Thames Street, The City EC3R 6DL. Website: onecitylondon.com

How much do the tickets cost?

You can buy adults tickets from £15, and children (8-15 years) from £10. Children under-8 are not allowed.

What are the opening hours?

The tours run at 11am, 12 noon and 1pm (Sat only during Apr to Nov).

How much time do you need?

A typical visit to Billingsgate Roman House and Baths takes 1 hour.

Which buses go to Billingsgate Roman House and Baths?

Bus routes 15, 42, 78 and 100 all stop close by.

Which is the closest train station?

The nearest station is Monument, which connects with the Circle and District lines. It only takes three minutes to walk to Billingsgate Roman House and Baths.

Which other attractions are nearby?

These attractions are all within 15 minutes walk of Billingsgate Roman House & Baths: The Monument, Sky Garden, All Hallows-by-the-Tower, Leadenhall Market, HMS Belfast, Tower of London, Royal Exchange, The Shard, Old Operating Theatre, Horizon 22, Mansion House, London Mithraeum, Golden Hinde, Clink Prison Museum and Borough Market.

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My review of Billingsgate Roman House and Baths

Worth a visit? ★★★Good value? ★★☆Good for kids? ★☆☆

Reviewed by Craig Cross on 30 August 2025. Times and prices updated on 22 July 2026

Considering the Romans lived here for 350 years I’ve always found it rather disappointing that there’s so little of Londinium left. If you want to see what remains of Roman London nowadays then you typically have to file down a flight of stairs where you’ll be lucky to find a few bits of brick in a basement. Roman London is under London, and if you want to see it then that’s where you have to go.

The Billingsgate Roman House was discovered in 1848 while the Victorians were digging out the foundations of the Coal Exchange. Further excavations were made in the 1960s when they replaced it with the ugly office block that stands there today.

When you step inside the front door they tick your name off in a register and then you have to wait around while the rest of your time-slot group turns up (there’s always somebody who turns up five minutes late). Then the guide huddles everyone around a street map that’s been blu-tacked to a filing cabinet and gives you a ten minute history of the city.

Inside the front door of the office block

She explains that the house dates back to about 150 AD (100 years after the Romans first arrived) so it already had a forum, a fort by the Barbican, a basilica underneath Leadenhall Market, an amphitheatre underneath the Guildhall Art Gallery, and lots of religious temples like the Temple of Mithras. This is the only private house that’s ever been found and everybody will be itching to see it by the time she’s finished her little introduction. It will feel like the cupboard door to Narnia when you finally get led downstairs – like a portal to the ancient world. What treasures will you find down there? What will you see? Some statues, mosaics? Maybe some painted frescos on the wall?

The Roman pottery finds on the racks at the back

Er… no. What you actually find is a room that has all the atmosphere of an underground car park. It’s more of an archaeological site than a museum so don’t go expecting a multimedia show and display cases full of exhibits. It’s literally a dig site with some cardboard boxes of pottery on the racks at the back.

For the next fifty minutes the guide leads the entire group around a trail of metal walkways suspended five feet off the floor by scaffolding poles, past the buzzing strip lights, pipes and wires that are hanging off the concrete walls, and using a little laser light to point out all the busted bricks of Roman London underneath your feet.

She describes the rooms in great detail but you basically have to take her word for it in the east wing because the lines are disguised by the rubble, but the bathhouse is remarkably well preserved with a tepidarium (warm room), caldarium (hot room) and frigidarium (cold room).

The Romans certainly knew how to have a bath. They started in the tepidarium and then disappeared into the caldarium’s cloud of steam where you can still see the underfloor furnace where they circulated the hot air around the piles of hypocaust tiles. Then they’d cool themselves down with a ladle of water in the frigidarium.

The floor of the frigidarium in the Roman bath house

Can you imagine having an hour-long bath before work these days? For us it’s a quick five minutes in the shower before heading out the door to run for the bus. When archaeologists dig us up in a thousand years all they’re going to find is a tatty piece of lino and a stainless steel sink. No murals or mosaics for them, just a plastic toothbrush with the bristles missing. The Romans really went to town with it. But I suppose when you live in an age without computers and TV what else are you going to do? You may as well have an hour-long bath.

The floor and hypocaust tiles in the tepidarium

The guide explains that after a century of enjoying their riverside view the authorities decided to extend the city wall along the edge of the Thames, and the private house was turned into a boarding house or brothel. It remained occupied right up until the end of Roman rule in 410 AD, but had probably already fallen into ruins by 500 AD when a Saxon lady dropped her brooch in the collapsed roof materials.

The underground furnace and hypocaust tiles in the caldarium

When she shows you a photo of that brooch it will hit you just how old it all is because this house was built three centuries before the Saxon lady saw it. When the Romans abandoned the city to the riverside weeds and trees it would be another six centuries before William the Conqueror built the Tower of London next-door, plus another six centuries again before the Great Fire of London levelled everything up to St. Paul’s. Three centuries after that the Luftwaffe were dropping bombs on it, and eighty five years later me and you turned up. That’s how much history has passed since the Romans were living in this house.

You can see the remains of the Roman amphitheatre in Guildhall Art Gallery, an underground Roman temple at the London Mithraeum, a Roman bath at Billingsgate Roman House, and two pieces of Roman pavement at All Hallows-by-the-Tower and inside the crypt of St Bride’s church

What do you think? (2)

Ask a question, or share your experience of Billingsgate Roman House and Baths

Rob A great place to visit. It was a total surprise to me to see such extensive ruins in the basement of a building. It made me wonder how many other ruins are lying under the streets just waiting to be discovered. (reply)

PHart We thought this was very interesting if rather small, and we recommend visiting the Museum of London if you are interested in the Roman era of London. (reply)

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