Maev Kennedy
The Richard III Visitor Centre will showcase the king's life, reign and gruesome death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Photograph: Christian Dezelu
In the heart of Leicester, visitors will be invited to gaze down through a pane of glass into a rough oblong hole in the ground: the grave that for more than 500 years held the body of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III.
An outline of the skeleton with the twisted spine is projected on to the red-brown earth. The pit also holds the yellow pegs used by the excavators from the University of Leicester archaeology service in August 2012 to mark a discovery that would make front-page news around the world.
The city council now hopes the crowds who followed the story so avidly will come to its £4.5m visitor centre, opening to the public on Saturday. The attraction tells the tale of Richard's life, brief reign and death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and the discovery of his hastily dug and slightly too small grave in what had been the choir of the long-vanished Greyfriars church.
The sound of diggers, hammers, and chisels clatters in the narrow surrounding streets: new gardens are being created, flowers planted, expensive stone paving laid, benches and explanatory plaques installed. Next spring, when Richard is reburied in a handsome new tomb in the cathedral just 100 yards away and a display on medieval Leicester is installed in the Guildhall, the transformation of the most historic quarter of the city will be complete.
"We're expecting visitors from all over the world, but I certainly think everyone in Leicester will want to come, and I hope it will become very much part of the fabric of the city, so that when any friends or relatives visit, the first thing people will want to do is bring them here," said Iain Gordon, director of the centre.
Even before the press conference in February last year when, after months of tests, the university announced "beyond reasonable doubt" that they had found Richard, the council had taken a leap of faith and bought the freehold of a Victorian school building that had stood empty and decaying across the road from the cathedral since 2008.
When the archaeologists dug up broken stones with Gothic carving there, they first thought they'd found part of a great medieval window that would once have lit the king's grave. In fact, they came from a demolished school outbuilding.
Although generations of children had played unknowingly over the ruins of the church, the grave lay just on the other side of their playground wall, under the tarmac of a council-owned car park. That has now been joined to the former school and the grave sheltered in a stone and glass building.
As well as replicas of the skeleton and the skull, Richard's head has been recreated as it is believed to have looked in life. The displays include the union jack-patterned Hunter wellies worn at the site by Philippa Langley, the author and member of the Richard III Society, which raised the money and persuaded the university archaeologists to take on the search.
Nearby there are the hard hat and high-vis jacket worn by Mathew Morris when he found Richard's bones in the first hour of the first day – and buried them again for later study, assuming they would prove to be of no particular interest.
There is also a photograph of Richard Buckley, the excavation project director, eating a hard-hat-shaped biscuit. When he launched the project, Buckley was so convinced they'd find nothing except a few traces of the lost friary – if they were lucky – that he promised to eat his hat if they found the king. His team baked him a more palatable alternative.
The displays also explain a story that casts a dark shadow over Richard's reign: how his brother's young sons, whom he declared illegitimate in order to claim the crown, vanished in the Tower of London. However, it leaves open the question of whether they were actually killed on Richard's orders.
"Did Richard kill the little princes in the Tower? My position is that I sit firmly on the fence," Buckley said. "What I will say is that Richard was probably no better and no worse than any other late medieval king."
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/22/richard-iii-visitor-centre-leicester
An outline of the skeleton with the twisted spine is projected on to the red-brown earth. The pit also holds the yellow pegs used by the excavators from the University of Leicester archaeology service in August 2012 to mark a discovery that would make front-page news around the world.
The city council now hopes the crowds who followed the story so avidly will come to its £4.5m visitor centre, opening to the public on Saturday. The attraction tells the tale of Richard's life, brief reign and death at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and the discovery of his hastily dug and slightly too small grave in what had been the choir of the long-vanished Greyfriars church.
The sound of diggers, hammers, and chisels clatters in the narrow surrounding streets: new gardens are being created, flowers planted, expensive stone paving laid, benches and explanatory plaques installed. Next spring, when Richard is reburied in a handsome new tomb in the cathedral just 100 yards away and a display on medieval Leicester is installed in the Guildhall, the transformation of the most historic quarter of the city will be complete.
"We're expecting visitors from all over the world, but I certainly think everyone in Leicester will want to come, and I hope it will become very much part of the fabric of the city, so that when any friends or relatives visit, the first thing people will want to do is bring them here," said Iain Gordon, director of the centre.
Even before the press conference in February last year when, after months of tests, the university announced "beyond reasonable doubt" that they had found Richard, the council had taken a leap of faith and bought the freehold of a Victorian school building that had stood empty and decaying across the road from the cathedral since 2008.
When the archaeologists dug up broken stones with Gothic carving there, they first thought they'd found part of a great medieval window that would once have lit the king's grave. In fact, they came from a demolished school outbuilding.
Although generations of children had played unknowingly over the ruins of the church, the grave lay just on the other side of their playground wall, under the tarmac of a council-owned car park. That has now been joined to the former school and the grave sheltered in a stone and glass building.
As well as replicas of the skeleton and the skull, Richard's head has been recreated as it is believed to have looked in life. The displays include the union jack-patterned Hunter wellies worn at the site by Philippa Langley, the author and member of the Richard III Society, which raised the money and persuaded the university archaeologists to take on the search.
Nearby there are the hard hat and high-vis jacket worn by Mathew Morris when he found Richard's bones in the first hour of the first day – and buried them again for later study, assuming they would prove to be of no particular interest.
There is also a photograph of Richard Buckley, the excavation project director, eating a hard-hat-shaped biscuit. When he launched the project, Buckley was so convinced they'd find nothing except a few traces of the lost friary – if they were lucky – that he promised to eat his hat if they found the king. His team baked him a more palatable alternative.
The displays also explain a story that casts a dark shadow over Richard's reign: how his brother's young sons, whom he declared illegitimate in order to claim the crown, vanished in the Tower of London. However, it leaves open the question of whether they were actually killed on Richard's orders.
"Did Richard kill the little princes in the Tower? My position is that I sit firmly on the fence," Buckley said. "What I will say is that Richard was probably no better and no worse than any other late medieval king."
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/22/richard-iii-visitor-centre-leicester
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