The world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle reveals ancient Roman luxury in London

Archaeologist Han Li spent three months piecing together thousands of Roman fresco fragments from 43-150 A.D., revealing London's largest collection of painted Roman plaster from Southwark.

There’s something deeply moving about the act of bringing back to light what time has tried to erase. Han Li, an archaeologist and ancient materials specialist at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), knows this feeling well. She has just completed one of the most delicate and extraordinary works of artistic reconstruction in recent years.

With patience, dedication, and expertise, she spent three months organizing thousands of painted plaster fragments that had been thrown into a large pit and forgotten for nearly two millennia. The result? The largest collection of Roman frescoes ever discovered in London. A true archaeological puzzle, fragment by fragment, until revealing a world of forms and colors that no one had seen since the 2nd century A.D.

An explosion of colors and symbols

The discovery took place in Southwark, a district in central London where a high-ranking Roman London building once stood. The structure had already been demolished before 200 A.D., and much of the interior decoration had ended up shattered in a pit.

It was there that MOLA archaeologists found this extraordinary collection of frescoed plaster, dating between 43 and 150 A.D., a period when Rome dominated Britain. According to scholars, the frescoes covered at least twenty interior walls, probably in private and representative rooms, designed to display the wealth and refined taste of the owner.

The decorations unfold in bright yellow panels, separated by black elements, and populated with natural motifs: fruits, flowers, birds, and even musical instruments like the lyre. A surprising and rare chromatic combination, since yellow panels weren’t common even in Roman art. Until today, a similar type of decoration has been identified in only a very few other British sites – notably at Fishbourne Roman Palace (660 miles or 1,063 kilometers from London), one of Britain’s most luxurious Roman residences.

What makes this discovery particularly fascinating is how the artists drew inspiration from decorations found elsewhere in the Roman world. Some fragments deliberately imitate expensive materials – red Egyptian porphyry and African giallo antico marble – without the enormous cost and labor of actually hauling such precious stones across the empire. It’s a clever bit of ancient interior design trickery that speaks to both artistic skill and practical economics.

The marks left by time

Among the fragments reassembled by Han Li, archaeologists have also identified what remains of a Roman artistic signature, carved on a tabula ansata, the classic decorative plaque where artists of the era left their names.

The only readable word is “FECIT,” meaning “has made,” but the painter’s name has been lost, erased by a break at the exact point where it should have appeared. A detail that makes this work even more poetic: the artwork survives, but its creator remains invisible.

Hidden among the fragments, graffiti left by unknown hands also emerged. Among these, the drawing of a weeping woman stands out, with a hairstyle recognizable from the Flavian era (69-96 A.D.). But that’s not all: another fragment bears the entire Greek alphabet, hand-carved. A curiosity that has surprised scholars – according to similar examples found in Italy, the alphabet could have had practical use, as a reminder or tool for counting. This is, to date, the only known example of this type from Roman Britain.

The discovery hints at something more intriguing about the building’s purpose. The presence of such detailed Greek lettering, combined with the commercial-scale grandeur of the space, suggests this wasn’t just a private residence. Li and her team suspect it may have been partly commercial property, perhaps related to the storage or distribution of amphorae and vessels brought to London by ship from across the Roman Empire.

A puzzle of extraordinary complexity

Han Li described the discovery this way: “When I began arranging the fragments, I was torn between excitement and fear of not being able to do it. Many pieces were extremely thin, and they came from different walls, all mixed together. It was really like putting together the world’s most difficult jigsaw puzzle.”

The work required extreme sensitivity: each fragment was studied, cleaned, and carefully juxtaposed in a long and delicate process that allowed giving form and life back to a work that no one, not even the Romans of subsequent centuries, had ever seen again.

Li discovered painter’s guidelines that are visible only under certain lighting conditions – faint sketches of flowers within circles that the original artists apparently decided against painting. These ghostly traces offer a remarkable window into the creative process of craftsmen working 1,800 years ago. You can almost imagine them standing before these walls, making last-minute decisions about composition and color.

The scale of this reconstruction project is staggering. The largest single fresco measures about 16.4 feet by 9.8 feet (5 meters by 3 meters), with intricate detailing throughout. The lower section features pale pink dotted with paint specks to imitate marble, while above are rich yellow panels with soft green borders, adorned with candelabras, lyres, white cranes, and delicate daisies.

One particularly intriguing detail caught Li’s attention: what initially appeared to be grapes turned out, upon closer examination by archaeobotanists, to be mistletoe – a plant native to northern Europe. “That is actually quite interesting for me,” Li explains, “because you’re seeing that the Roman painters are taking a classical idea and they’re very much putting their own northwest European, or local, twist on it. I think that’s magnificent.”

The discovery, experts from MOLA explain, represents a unique testimony to the Roman presence in England, which lasted from 43 to 410 A.D., and is still visible today through fragments that speak, whisper, and endure.

This find transforms our understanding of what archaeologist Andrew Henderson-Schwartz calls “the Beverly Hills of Roman London” – Southwark was clearly a thriving, bustling settlement quite early in the Roman period. The investment in such elaborate interior decoration suggests the Romans weren’t just passing through; they were committing to London as a permanent, prosperous settlement.

The work continues as Li and her colleagues analyze each piece, comparing the Liberty wall paintings to others from Britain and the wider Roman world. Their ultimate goal is to understand whether these may be the work of the same group of highly skilled painters who traveled the Roman Empire, moving from commission to commission as the building boom in Londinium created demand for their services.

For now, after nearly two millennia buried in London soil, these vibrant artworks have returned to light – a testament to both ancient artistry and modern archaeological dedication.

Source: Museum of London Archaeology