Bronze head from a statue of the Emperor Hadrian, Roman Britain, 2nd century AD. Found in the River Thames near London Bridge in 1834. © Trustees of the British Museum

Hadrian: Empire and Conflict

When: 24 Jul - 26 Oct 2008

Where: British Museum

The British Museum's latest blockbuster traces the life of one of the greatest Roman emperors. Hadrian: Empire and Conflict brings together 180 objects to throw light on the man, the emperor, his empire, wife and lover.

Like the museum's preceding exhibition The First Emperor, Hadrian: Empire and Conflict occupies the bespoke exhibition space fashioned inside the Reading Room of the old British Library, at the centre of the Great Court. Thereby hangs an important connection between Hadrian - who rebuilt Rome's Pantheon with what is still the world's largest unsupported dome - as the Reading Room's dome is just 70cm or so smaller than that of the Pantheon.

Exhibits about the Pantheon, as well as extensive remains from Hadrian's expansive villa near Tivoli, south-east of Rome (including a detailed scale model) form the centrepiece of this exhibition, curated by Thorsten Opper.

Despite the scope of the exhibition, Hadrian remains something of an enigma. An astute and practical ruler, he withdrew Roman forces from the eastern border of his empire, realising the wars of his predecessor Trajan there were unwinnable. He consolidated other borders, most famously in Britain with the Roman Wall, or "Hadrian's Wall." But he could be an unforgiving ruler, as his harsh subjugation of a Jewish revolt testifies (remarkable remains from Israeli caves are on show).

Awash with statues, including those of his wife, Sabine and young male lover, Antinous, the exhibition attempts to flesh out the remarkably few written sources for Hadrian's reign. Perhaps most saliently, it took his successor, Antoninus Pius, a great effort to have Hadrian made divine, because the Roman senate had taken against Hadrian's sometimes murderous attempts at ensuring the imperial succession.

Hadrian's adoration of the memory of Antinous - including building an Egyptian city, Antinoopolis, named after him, where he had mysteriously died in AD 130 - and the Mediterranean-wide cult for Antinous that rivaled early Christianity is explored, before the final section on Hadrian's own Mausoleum, still visible in Rome, though better known now as Castel Sant'Angelo.