A World Once Lost

Beneath the city of Bath’s Georgian streets lie the remains of the ancient Roman town of Aquae Sulis. Its Roman Baths were once alive with the hustle and bustle of this ancient society. A complex of sacred springs and temples, this was a place where statesmen and slaves alike came together to pray, relax and socialise.

The Roman Baths is one of the most impressive historic sites in the UK. A scheduled ancient monument and UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can feel the history bouncing off the walls. We have worked with the Roman Baths for more than 10 years to deliver a series of phased projects that have brought the site back to life.

The site poses a number of practical challenges. It is an almost impossibly fragile structure that is fraught with accessibility issues, yet receives more than one million visitors every year and could not close during renovations. Through a series of diligently planned and carefully phased projects, we made the site more accessible to disabled visitors – all while visitors continued to pass through the doors.

Today, the baths have been restored to their original splendour. Walking around the site, you get a sense of a world once lost. Hear the Romans around you – laughing, chatting, plotting – and see them stroll along the colonnades. Life-size projections around the ancient walls and across the water show everyone from priests to paupers going about their daily business. The projections set the scene and provide context for beautiful object displays, a multimedia reimagining of lost architecture and detailed scale models showing the vast complex.