Hidden Britain AtlasOpen the map
All places › Unexplained
Unexplained

The Lost Ninth Legion

York

Five thousand Roman soldiers who disappeared from history.

The Ninth Legion helped conquer Britain and built the fortress at York. The last sure record of it in Britain is an inscription from York dated around AD 108.

Read the full story, see it on the map, get directions and find what else is nearby in the free Hidden Britain Atlas map.

Open The Lost Ninth Legion on the mapReport a sighting here
When
After AD 108
Where
53.9620, -1.0830
Group
Unexplained

Visiting

Remains of the Roman fortress lie under York Minster, which has tours of its undercroft.

Cover of The Ledger of Lost Artifacts and Civilizations by Cale Mills
From the book

The Ledger of Lost Artifacts and Civilizations

The story goes that sometime around the year 117 AD, a Roman legion of about five thousand men marched north out of York to put down a rising in the Scottish highlands, and was never seen again. It is one of the most famous disappearances in British history. It is also, in the form most people know it, probably not true.

Not every mystery needs a lost continent. This book investigates fifty-nine real and often overlooked puzzles from the ancient and modern world: a temple older than farming itself, astonishing structures, out-of-place artifacts, and technologies lost to time. Each case is weighed honestly, with a clear ledger of the case for and against, so you can make up your own mind. Some cases collapse under scrutiny. Others remain genuinely unexplained. All of them are stranger than Atlantis.

Buy on AmazonAll books by Cale Mills

Nearby mysteries