Bloomberg Philanthropies has broken the record for the largest private donation to the London Museum, with a gift of £20m and a world-renowned collection of Roman artefacts.
London Museum will use the money to aid its move from 150 London Wall to Smithfield market, which is currently scheduled for completion in 2026.
The artefacts, which total more than 14,000 objects and were uncovered on the site of Bloomberg’s European headquarters in the City, will be shown at the new museum. They are primarily related to the lost Temple of Mithras.
London Museum’s Director, Sharon Ament, called the donations a “momentous gift” that “ties the past to the future and which will be a lasting legacy for London”.
Uncovering the Temple of Mithras. Credit: London Museum
Ament said: “We are hugely ambitious for this project – from setting high standards in sustainability, to creating new apprenticeships for young people; moving the dial on digital opportunities to involving a record number of Londoners in the making of the museum.
“This will be a place truly of and for the city that we hope Londoners will be proud of.”
The overall budget for the new London Museum is £437m, provided by a partnership between the City of London Corporation, the London Museum, and the Greater London Authority, as well as a range of private foundations, sponsors, and private philanthropy.
Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, described the new museum as “one of the biggest cultural projects in Europe”.
“The generous donation of these wonderful Roman artefacts will be a great addition to the London Museum’s collections,” he added.
The Temple of Mithras and Bloomberg
The Temple of Mithras has been famous since its discovery by W.F Grimes in 1952, but Bloomberg-funded archaeological excavations were undertaken by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) between 2012 and 2014 as part of the construction of Bloomberg’s new European headquarters in the City.
This led to the opening of the London Mithraeum Bloomberg SPACE in 2017, which allows visitors to see a reconstruction of the temple close to its original location.
The underground exhibition, which has welcomed more than 600,000 visitors since opening, contains around 600 of the 14,000 artefacts uncovered.
Watch the full story of the temple (and its mysterious cult) below: