Sacred London

London Mithraeum

A temple to Mithras, sunk into the ground because his worship belonged in a cave.

Also in Museums and Monuments & Ruins.

Mithras was the god of a mystery cult, which means its members were sworn to secrecy, wrote almost nothing down for anyone outside it, and appear to have admitted only men. What is known is mostly architectural. Their temples were built long, low and partly below ground, because the act at the centre of the religion - Mithras killing a bull - was said to have happened in a cave, and the room was meant to be that cave. The carving of that scene stood at the end of the hall, where the altar stands in a church.

This one went up in the middle of the third century on the east bank of the Walbrook, then a real stream running down to the Thames. Early in the fourth century somebody dug pits in the floor and buried the marble heads of Mithras, Minerva, Serapis and Mercury, and the building seems to have been rededicated to Bacchus. Whether the heads were being hidden or disposed of is not known.

It was found in 1954 during the rebuilding of the bombed City, taken apart, and put back together in 1962 a hundred metres away at street level - a reconstruction criticised for decades. In 2017 it was returned to roughly its own ground, seven metres beneath Bloomberg's headquarters, and staged with light and sound.

Where

12 Walbrook, EC4N 8AA

Nearest station

Cannon Street · 1 min walk

Step-free access

Hours

NearbySacred London

• St Stephen Walbrook1 min walk
• St Mary Woolnoth2 min walk
• St Mary-le-Bow3 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Mansion HouseMuseums1 min walk
• London StoneMonuments & Ruins2 min walk
• Crosstown Cannon StreetDesserts & Gelato2 min walk

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