Colosseum

Colosseum, Rome, Italy

The Latin for flavour is not flavius. Flavius is the family name of the creators of the amphitheatre better known as the Colosseum. The royal daddy Vespasian kicked the project off and little Titus officially opened the circus in 80 AD. The Colosseum was the largest of its kind to be built in the Roman Empire.

Aside from its striking appearance and magnitude, the structure is an engineering and construction marvel, complete with advanced crowd management planning, still used today. A retractable awning even kept spectators from the harsh sun. Impressively, the Colosseum was said to have been flooded with water to showcase swimming horses as well as live reproductions of a historic battles at sea.

There were many performances and events arranged for the inaugural ceremonies which lasted one hundred days. “No animals were harmed during the making of this movie” was certainly not the slogan of the day. It is unconfirmed but historians believe that 5000 beasts of some form or other, went to that great, big nature reserve in the sky over that short period.

The Colosseum is better known or rather, infamous, for the frequent gladiatorial fracas put on to cater to the crowd’s bloodlust. It is a little known fact that the odd mythological drama was played out for the masses before returning to animal hunts and all manner of gruesome executions.

150 years later, along came Emperor Alexander Severus, who was indeed severe. After completing restorations, he ordered another big, old shindig. This time the animals only numbered in the low triple figures but 2000 sweaty men received the fatal hand gesture, the thumbs down of the presiding emperor.

A couple centuries later, the honourable Honorius thought it to be a bad idea, all this running around with sharp sticks and the like and called the whole thing off. The rest of the creatures, great and small, were a little less lucky and spent another century looking at the wrong end of a sharp sword. Eventually this too was outlawed and needless to say, TV ratings plummeted. The amphitheatre fell into disuse and ill repair.

Barbarians, the real kind, raided the Colosseum for bronze and the locals pinched some of the stones to build their houses. Over time the structure was used for religious purposes, housing and so on. Much restoration and in turn more stone theft took place over two millennia.

As it stands today, the circumference is over half a kilometre and the building stands four stories tall. In its prime it held between 45 and 50 thousand spectators. They were arranged in three viewing tiers according to their status and wealth. The cheap seats were the highest up and furthest away from the action. Not much has changed in two thousand years.

Wandering around the ruins, it is impossible not to get a sense of the history, grandeur and horror that took place in that very spot. It is an obvious choice for a modern day wonder (one of the new 7 wonders of the world) and something everyone should see in their lifetime. The Colosseum has survived fire, earthquakes and enemy fire during WW2, the least you can do is pay a visit.

Photo by Vitanis