Leicester's Roman heritage is captured in microcosm at the site of the city's famous Jewry Wall. The wall's name derives from local Saxon administrators, or 'jurats', these men were the senior members of The Corporation of Leicester and regularly held their meetings at the site.
Dating back to around a century after the Roman invasion of Britain, the wall itself is all that remains standing of an extensive Roman bath complex, but much of the building's original foundations remain to this day. These remarkably well-preserved remains represent one of the largest and finest examples of Roman wall construction anywhere in the country.
Leicester was an important settlement at the time the bath complex would have been constructed, situated as it was on The Fosse Way - the M1 of its day - because of this the baths were understandably opulent. For evidence of this opulence, simply take a trip to the Jewry Wall Museum that adjoins the wall itself, where you will find a host of beautiful Roman artifacts - from coins to decorative plaster-work to stunning mosaics.