It might these days be a mug, tea towel, bottle of gin or that jar of toffee apple curd still in the back of the cupboard.
But nearly 2,000 years ago, if you had the money, it was beautifully enamelled wine cups commissioned from the most skilled craftspeople.
English Heritage is shining a light on Hadrian’s Wall souvenirs with a display that brings together, for the first time, a group of the oldest known examples.
In a way, it should not be surprising that the Romans collected souvenirs. “People are people, aren’t they,” said Frances McIntosh, the English Heritage curator at Hadrian’s Wall.
“We know that high-ranking officers and high-ranking civil servants would only be in a posting for three to five years, and then be sent somewhere else in the empire. So it makes sense that they would want a souvenir, a memory of that time – whether good or bad.”
McIntosh has curated the display of souvenirs at Chesters Roman Fort and Museum in Northumberland, where the star of the show is an object known as the Rudge cup.
It was made in about AD130 and is believed to be one of the earliest known souvenirs from the wall. The small bronze bowl bears the names of Hadrian’s Wall forts: A Mais (Bowness-on-Solway), Aballava (Burgh by Sands), Vxelodvm (Stanwix), Camboglans (Castlesteads) and Banna (Birdoswald).
It also has an illustration of the wall, which would have been decorated with coloured enamels.
“It would have been really bright and beautiful,” said McIntosh, as would other exhibits including the Winterton pan, loaned from North Lincolnshire Museum, and the Brougham patera, from Tullie House Museum in Carlisle. “The copper alloys are green now, but you’ve got to imagine they would have been as bright as two-pence pieces.
“They would have been so beautiful – they are pieces of stunning craftmanship.”
Who commissioned what are essentially souvenir spiced wine cups and where they were made will never be known, although McIntosh said Carlisle was the most likely place.
They were one-off versions of something that was ubiquitous and would not have been cheap. “It is a really human thing, isn’t it, to adapt something you are familiar with to act as a specific memory,” said McIntosh.
The Rudge cup has made its way from Alnwick Castle, where it is in the collection of the Duke of Northumberland. It was originally found in Wiltshire in the early 18th century.
One aim of the display, McIntosh said, was to show how souvenirs have changed over the centuries – and how they have stayed the same.
“Some souvenirs can be wacky, or even tacky, while some are beautiful works of art, but all of them carry memories of a visit, and that is what makes them important to their owners, whether modern or Roman,” she said.
Also on display is a large replica bust of the emperor Hadrian, bought in the 1970s from the British Museum, a selection of badges and a little bit of wood from a timber fort in Carlisle. “When they excavated it, they sold little chunks to raise funds,” said McIntosh.
Then there is the sort of souvenir English Heritage would definitely frown upon today. It is a box dating from 1891 with small objects and a note saying: “From the Roman fortified camp of Cilurnum on the north Tyne … taken by GG Esquire in company with the bishop of Newcastle.”
McIntosh said: “It is a time when souvenirs were very different; you just pick something nice up off the site, which obviously we don’t advocate now. We don’t know who GG was, but we could tell you the name of the bishop.”
Memento: Souvenirs from Hadrian’s Wall is at Chesters Roman Fort and Museum until 30 October
