Verulamium grew beside the River Ver from an important late Iron Age center usually called Verlamion. The settlement was associated with the Catuvellauni and produced inscribed coins before the Roman invasion of 43 CE. Under Roman rule it gained urban status, probably becoming a municipium in the first century. Its location on Watling Street, about a day’s journey from Londinium, supported trade and administration. Streets, a forum, basilica, temples, houses, workshops, and public buildings spread across a large planned area.

Boudica’s forces attacked and burned Verulamium in 60 or 61 CE because its inhabitants were aligned with Rome. Archaeologists have identified a destruction layer associated with the revolt. The city was rebuilt, increasingly in masonry, and expanded behind walls and ditches. Fires and redevelopment altered districts during the second and third centuries. A theater, unusual in Roman Britain for its stage-based plan, hosted performances and ceremonies. Houses with mosaics, painted walls, courtyards, and hypocaust heating reveal prosperous residents alongside evidence for craft and ordinary commerce.

Christian tradition connects the area with Alban, remembered as Britain’s first martyr. His execution and burial were placed outside the Roman city, on the hill where St Albans Cathedral later developed. Verulamium itself contracted as Roman administration ended in the early fifth century. Medieval settlement grew around the shrine rather than within the entire ancient walled area. Stone from Roman structures was reused, fields covered streets and buildings, and the name survived in learned memory and in titles such as Francis Bacon’s Baron Verulam.

Large-scale excavations led by Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler between 1930 and 1934 followed the city’s acquisition of land for a public park. Their work exposed streets, defenses, houses, shops, and public monuments and produced extensive collections. Verulamium Museum was established to display these finds and later expanded, including major work in the 1990s. Nearby, a preserved mosaic and hypocaust remain in place beneath a protective building, while sections of wall and the theater allow visitors to read the city outdoors.

The museum displays mosaics, wall painting, pottery, jewelry, coins, tools, glass, sculpture, inscriptions, burials, and reconstructed rooms. Its interpretation increasingly examines conquest, collaboration, enslavement, migration, religion, food, work, and family life rather than presenting Romanization as a simple one-way process. Much of Verulamium remains unexcavated beneath parkland and private fields, making conservation of buried deposits essential. The combined city and museum preserve both a major Roman urban center and the history of twentieth-century archaeology that brought it into public view.