Huge congratulations to Charlotte, Year 13, who has received the runner up prize of the EMACT (East Midlands Association of Classics Teachers) Art Competition held in collaboration with the Classical Association. She will share the prize money of £500 with the winner and other runner up.

The theme for 2024 was Landscapes of Roman Britain; looking for creative entries that explore Roman Britain in a visually interesting way. This could include a painting, a drawing, a photograph, or a photography series.

‘Sunset on the Roman Empire’ is an unedited photograph that I took of the sun setting through clouds seen behind the Roman town wall at St Albans, the Roman town of Verulamium.

As the Roman Empire withdrew from its outward reaches, around 400 AD, Britain was one of the first provinces to lose direct control by Rome.
Having been mentioned in many sources during its Roman occupation, notably in a tablet from Marcus Rennius Venustus, now in Verulamium Museum, asking for money from a friend in Verulamium, Verulamium is known to have been a military stronghold as well as a domestic centre. With a theatre, baths, amphitheatre, forum, and basilica as well as multiple temples and countless houses, the town spanned much of what is modern day St Albans, indeed the buildings of the modern town are mostly built on top of the ruins of the old one.

Leading up to its fall into partial ruin, the town was sacked by Boudica in 61 AD and was destroyed by two fires in 155 and 250 AD, which damaged many of the large structures.

When it came to capturing the idea of the Roman landscape of Verulamium, it was clear to me that inclusion of one of the parts of the Roman town which still stands would be the best approach. While options such as the theatre were appealing, a stage recently added to the middle of it for modern performances seemed to rather put an end to that idea and looked out of place. This soon appeared as a common trend in the town, to have the new and old existing in the same space, and I thought that this was not quite what I envisaged for a way of encapsulating the essence of the Roman life of Verulamium.
When the sun was setting, I saw an excellent opportunity, however, in the crumbling Roman wall on a hill in Verulamium Park.

I positioned the photograph so that the sun’s rays coming from behind the clouds were visible through the gap in the wall where the gates of the town once stood. To me this seemed to encapsulate a sense of both the glory, and the end, of Roman Britain.