Digging up a gem

I really like the Chester Amphitheatre blog. It's not updated terribly frequently - most updates occur in the summer when the excavation work is ongoing.

What marks it out is its connectivity to local life. Chester being a good 2,000+ years old, we are surrounded by history at every step of the way. The Roman settlement here was one of the most important in the UK - Deva very nearly became the Roman capital of our country.

The amphitheatre was half-excavated several decades ago, but a recent grant means that over the last few summers the archaeology team has been in town to do more digging. The blog reports on their progress as well on other Roman-related news.

For Cestrians, the dig and blog are part of the living history around us. I doubt there's a person in Chester who dislikes the amphitheatre - it's a public place where people go to sit in peace or just hang out, or even just walk past it thinking of what had taken place there two millennia ago.