Few British cities wear their history so visibly stacked as York. Beneath the modern streets lie the walls of Eboracum, the Roman fortress founded around 71 AD; beneath that, the timber houses of Jorvik, the Viking-age trading capital excavated so famously at Coppergate; and above both, the stone walls, Bars and Minster of the medieval walled city. This model stacks those strata as a simplified archaeological cutaway, the same way excavators read a trench wall from top (modern) to bottom (oldest).
The Coppergate dig that uncovered Jorvik in 1976–81 found timber, leather and textiles so well preserved in York's waterlogged soil that excavators could date individual house plots almost year by year — one of the richest Viking-age urban excavations ever recorded.
A stack of four colour-coded strata — Roman Eboracum, Viking Jorvik, medieval York and the modern city — that you can excavate, spotlight and pull apart to see how nearly two thousand years of history sit on top of one another.
Each layer carries simplified landmarks true to its era: a Roman corner tower and barracks, Viking timber long-houses from Coppergate, York Minster and the medieval Bars, and today's street grid — stacked in the order archaeologists actually find them.
Drag the excavation slider to strip strata from the top down, spotlight a single era to "x-ray" through the layers above it, and use layer separation to explode the stack into a clearer side-on diagram.
York's Roman walls, Viking street names ending in "-gate", and medieval Bars all still exist above ground today — the city rebuilt itself directly on top of its own history rather than starting over.