Roman Frontier Gallery

'The Roman Frontier: stories beyond Hadrian's Wall ' gallery is a permanent exhibition which showcases Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery’s significant Roman collections along with items on loan from the British Museum.

A broad range of interpretative techniques have been employed throughout the gallery including mixed-media displays and experience-based interactive exhibits aimed at local, national and international visitors.
 
The Living Wall area is a place where visitors can engage with ideas and stories, participate in dialogue with other visitors and the museum and develop an understanding from more contemporary examples about life on a frontier.
 

On display is a bronze face mask which dates to the first half of the 1st century AD and differs in shape from the Crosby Garrett or Nijmegen helmets, which were fashioned in two main pieces enclosing the head. This one was part of a helmet that had two separate cheek pieces, more like a “normal” helmet. This gives it a distinctly ‘flatter’ look when seen on its own – closer to a face plate rather than a full mask. In style it is similar to a mask discovered at Kalkriese in Germany, a site linked to the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9 where the Emperor Augustus’ provincial governor, Publius Quintillius Varus, lost three complete Legions to the Germans in an uprising led by local leader Arminius.


 

 
 
  
 
  

 
 
Outside the gallery is the public walkway linking Castle St and the Castle. Specially commissioned art features here are: a Steel Wall set with industrial artefacts (by Russell Coleman); a granite pavement inscribed with Border reiver family names and the 'Bishop's Stone', a 2.5 metre boulder inscribed with part of the Archbishop of Glasgow's stupendous curse upon the reivers (by Gordon Young).

Funded by The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), Renaissance Northwest and Carlisle City Council.