Continuing our Monday morning tour of Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and the Colosseum with Angel Tours….

After the Roman Forum, we left and walked up the street back to the Colosseum. … .

On our right (you can see slightly in the image) were a series of maps showing the progress of the Roman Empire. On our right was a flat, wide street I believe put in by Mussolini (very straight road with little to no regard for the historical architecture on either side).

Originally, this site was home to an artificial lake that Emperor Nero built and surrounded by porticos and terraces…

One of the political benefits of building this huge amphitheater (after Nero’s death) was it returned to the public the land that Nero had requisitioned for his private use.

EVERYWHERE were these ‘gladiators’ …. great for cheesy tourist photos … more on them in a future post.

Much more crowded than when we walked by a couple hours earlier ….

As I said – Angel Tours has it right. We walked RIGHT past this long (long) line. Breezed through security, and were inside the Colosseum lickety split.

From Rick Steves:

Built when the Roman Empire was at its peak in AD 80, the Colosseum represents Rome at its grandest. The Flavian Amphitheaer was an arena for gladiator contests and public spectacles. When killing became a spectator sport, the Romans wanted to share the fun with as many people as possible, so they stuck two semicircular theaters together to create a freestanding amphitheater. It could accommodate 50,000 roaring fans.

The Romans pioneered the use of concrete and the rounded arch, which enabled them to build on this tremendous scale. The exterior is a skeleton of 3.5 million cubic feet of travertine stone. (Each of the pillars flanking the ground-level arches weighs five tons.) It took 200 ox-drawn wagons shuttling back and forth every day for four years just to bring the stone here from Tivoli. They stacked stone blocks (without mortar) into the shape of an arch, supported temporarily by wooden scaffolding. Finally they wedged a keystone into the top of the arch – it not only kept the arch from falling, it could bear even more weight above. Iron pegs held the larger stones together – notice the small holes that pockmark the sides.*

*later generations took the iron for other projects.

Only a third of the original Colosseum remains. Earthquakes destroyed some of it, but most was carted off as easy pre-cut stones for other buildings during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

From this angle, you can see

…underground passages beneath the playing surface. The oval-shaped arena (280 by 165 feet) was originally covered with a wooden floor (currently recreated at one end) then sprinkled with sand (arena in Latin). The new bit of reconstructed Colosseum floor gives you an accurate sense of the original floor and the subterranean warren where animals and prisoners were held. As in modern stadiums, the spectators ringed the playing area in bleacher seats that slant up from the arena floor. The brick masses around supported the first small tier of seats and you can see two larger, slanted supports higher up.

A variety of materials were used to build the stadium. Big white travertine blocks stacked on top of each other formed the skeleton. The brick pillars for the bleachers were made with a shell of brick, filled in with concrete. Marble columns or ornamental facing covered the bare brick. (For the upper-floor cheap seats they used plaster.) A few marble seats have been restored (far left of image below). The whole thing was topped with an enormous canvas awning that could be hoisted across by armies of sailors to provide shade for the spectators.

Imagine the small elevators (image below) coming up through the floor with a tiger or similar to fight the gladiator – just like in Ridley Scott’s movie.

Remnants of steps leading to the next level

(love this boy)

From Rick Steves:

The game began with a few warm-up acts – watching dogs bloody themselves attacking porcupines, female gladiators fighting each other, or a little person battling a one-legged man. Then came the main event – the gladiators.

Some wielded swords, protected only with a shield and a heavy helmet. Others represented fighting fishermen, with a net to snare opponents and a trident to spear them. The gladiators were usually slaves, criminals, or poor people who got their chance for freedom, wealth, and fame in the ring. They learned to fight in training schools, then battled their way up the ranks. The best were rewarded like our modern sports stars, with fan clubs, great wealth, and, yes, product endorsements.

The animals came from all over the world: lions, tigers, bears, crocodiles, elephants and hippos (not to mention exotic human ‘animals’ from the ‘barbarian’ lands). They were kept in cages beneath the arena floor, then lifted up in elevators. Released at floor level, the animals would pop out from behind blinds into the arena – the gladiator didn’t know where, when, or by what he’d be attacked. (This brought howls of laughter from the hardened fans in the cheap seats who had a better view of the action.) Nets ringed the arena to protect the crowd. The stadium was inaugurated with a 100-day festival in which 2,000 men and 9,000 animals were killed. Colosseum employees squirted perfumes around the stadium to mask the stench of blood.

If a gladiator fell helpless to the ground, his opponent would approach the emperor’s box and ask: Should he live or die? Sometimes the emperor left the decision to the crowd, who would judge based on how valiantly the man had fought. They would make their decision – thumbs up or thumbs down. Consider the value of these games in placating and controlling the huge Roman populace. Seeing the king of beasts – a lion – slain by a gladiator reminded the masses of man’s triumph of nature. Seeing exotic animals from Africa heralded their conquest of distant lands. And having the thumbs up or thumbs down authority over another person’s life gave them a real sense of power. Imagine the psychological boost the otherwise down trodden masses felt when the emperor granted them this thrilling decision.

The exits were called ‘Vomitoriums’ … because of the way the spectators could exit so quickly …

The size of this thing was just amazing …. not the kind of thing you could even prepare for ….

Image below, shot from inside the Colosseum, toward the Arch of Constantine and Palatine Hill

Can you imagine how much lead, bronze and marble has been stripped from this structure?

As we were leaving … the sky started to cloud ….

coming up …. we started walking back to Trastevere, for lunch, to pick up our luggage, and head out to the train station ….