Revealing Roman Wroxeter: New insights from one of Britannia’s largest urban centres

Almost 2,000 years ago, Viroconium Cornoviorum – known to us as Wroxeter – was the fourth-largest public city in Roman Britain, equivalent in area to Pompeii. The Shropshire site has played an influential role in the study of urbanism in the Roman period since the first excavations took place there in the 1850s (see CA 338 for a summary of past investigations). The modern village, which lies 7.5km (4.7 miles) south-east of Shrewsbury, sits within the walls of the long-since abandoned Roman city, today a Scheduled Monument whose visible remains – which consist of its ramparts, as well as the exposed ruins of its public baths and a reconstructed townhouse – are cared for as a visitor a