The Rose Theatre

Its well-preserved archaeology was discovered in 1989 during a routine exploratory excavation held in the interval between site clearance and re-development of an office block. The Rose became a major international news story, and the site attracted many thousands of visitors. A campaign to ‘Save the Rose’ and protect it from redevelopment was launched with enthusiastic support form actors (including the dying Lord Olivier, who gave his last public speech on behalf of the Rose), scholars and the general public.

Currently the Rose can tell the visitor much about its life between 1587 and 1603. Red rope lights around the site indicate the size of the Rose, its courtyard or pit and the position of its two stages. There is a viewing platform from which these lights can be seen and a series of poster facts sheets which tell you much about not only the Rose, but about the area of Bankside which it occupied in the late 1590s and early 1600s.

The site today inspires actors and other artists just as it did over four hundred years ago and there are regular events and open days when their many talents can be put on show.

When it was erected in 1587 the Rose was only the fifth purpose-built theatre in London, and the first on Bankside; an area already rich in other leisure attractions such as brothels, gaming dens and bull/bear-baiting arenas. The first firm reference to it occurs only in 1552, when it was described as a tenement with two gardens known as the Little Rose. The Rose's success soon encouraged other theatres to be built on Bankside: the Swan in 1595 and the Globe in 1599. These rivals swiftly overtook the Rose. It appears to have fallen out of use by 1603 and had certainly been abandoned as a theatre by 1606. Soon it vanished from the map altogether.

More than 700 small objects and finds were discovered on the site and are now housed in the Museum of London in various stages of conservation and display. They include jewellery, coins, tokens and fragments of the moneyboxes used to collect entrance money from the audience.