Hadrian's Legacy

Everyone knows about Hadrian's most famous legacy in Britain – the 73-mile-long wall he had built between England and Scotland following his first tour of the country in AD 121 – but few other facts about the Roman emperor (117 -138AD) have become common knowledge. The British Museum's major summer exhibition tries to solve this by examining through 180 exhibits, including the museum's bronze head of Hadrian, the complex life of this leader. A military man showed tolerance for other cultures and took a great interest in architecture, commissioning buildings including the Pantheon in Rome.

Discover what the wall was built for,
the Roman legions who built it
and who lived near it and what they thought about it.