Journey, a global design and innovation studio pioneering multidimensional experiences (MDX), is partnering with London Museum to create Londinium: the making of a Roman city.
Set to open in spring next year, the free-entry exhibition draws on ten years of archaeological research into the internationally acclaimed Bloomberg Collection to bring the stories of early Roman London to life.
Journey’s contribution includes guest experience, exhibition design, media production and spatial storytelling, working in close partnership with audio experience designers DARKFIELD to develop the exhibition's narrative, scripts and characters.
Sensory-rich storytelling
Londinium: the making of a Roman city immerses guests in the first 50 years of Roman London and imagines the confrontations, conversations, and daily dealings in this frontier settlement as it grew from a rural landscape into a bustling urban hub.
Using dynamic projection and spatial soundscapes, its storytelling explores previously unseen objects from the peerless Bloomberg Collection of over 14,000 Roman artefacts, which was gifted to London Museum by Bloomberg Philanthropies in 2025.
Among the objects to be shown for the first time are Roman wax writing tablets, an infant’s feeding bottle, a coin from the reign of Emperor Nero, and Britain’s earliest known example of Eurasian cockroach eggs, found inside a Roman bakery oven.
Londinium: the making of a Roman city will be the inaugural exhibition to open in London Museum’s 800-square-metre network of underground vaults, rediscovered in 2019 during the museum’s decade-long renovation of Smithfield’s Victorian General Market.
Sharon Ament, director, London Museum, says: "When we rediscovered the vaults, we were determined to open them up. They are so specific, so evocative, so mysterious, we saw their potential straight away.
"So it makes me really rather pleased that the first exhibition inside them will be about the Londoners who created Londinium, with real artefacts from their lives from one of London’s most significant recent archaeological excavations."
Wider collaboration
The ambitious London Museum development project is transforming both the Victorian General Market site, set to open on 28 November, and neighbouring Poultry Market, which will launch in 2028.
Its Londinium: the making of a Roman city exhibition is part of a broader partnership between Journey and London Museum.
The studio is also working on the Past Time galleries, which tell London’s story from its earliest prehistoric inhabitants to transformative events like the Great Fire and the Blitz, and cultural milestones, such as the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
In August, Journey shared details of a project to create an immersive public experience for SNF Nostos 2026, the annual public festival of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, one of the world’s leading philanthropic organisations.
Rebecca Hardy has over 10 years' experience in the culture and heritage sector. She studied Fine Art at university and has written for a broad range of creative organisations including artists, galleries, and retailers. When she's not writing, she spends her time getting lost in the woods and making mud pies with her young son.
