We left bright and early today( it has become a routine for us to get up at 7am and walk till our legs fall off; today was no different.) But today we were going into the coliseum! Just one of the thousand year old structures that are apart of Rome.
Our tour guide met us outside of the coliseum and led us in straight in. I learned that the coliseum was built by the emperor Nero(you know the emperor who called himself domus laudus or god and lord, and the same one who had the whole city burn down during his reign, yea him) in 64 AD. It was built right after the burning of Rome when the city was being re-built and took 8 years. Also, I found out that 1/3 of Roman land was taken by Nero to rebuild the city including the land the Coliseum was built on.
After our short history lesson we followed the tour guide to the back end of the walkway and we snuck into the underground portion of the coliseum. Basically we got to see the "behind the scenes" of the coliseum, it was pretty awesome. We walked through the tunnel where the gladiators walked from their quarters to the floor of the coliseum. It was important for them to have their own private walkway so that people who had vendetta's aganist them couldn't do anything to them(something's haven't changed that much.) The way that the ceiling is held up is by a series of arches. The romans were the master's of arches. They would push blocks of rock(interestingly enough, each rock wasn't exactly the same size, in other words they weren't perfectly cut, they were each unique) together with enough pressure that they would stay in place and hold up an entire building. The middle rock was the central one that held every other one in place. Anyway, back in the ancient time this walkway was very dark damp for the gladiators.
As we kept walking we say a little stream and we found out that they would actually store boats underground and simulate a waterfront scene during the shows on the floor of the coliseum. Also, during the reign of Claudius they made this stream was made into an aqueduct that brings water to all over the coliseum and all the way to the palantine hill. Then we came to stand right at the underneath of the actual floor and we saw the cells that they would keep the large animals in( lions, tigers etc.) Next to the cells were lifts that they would use to bring the animals and sometimes gladiators to bring them up to the floor level. It took 16 slaves to lift one animal. There were at one time 20-60 lifts that were usable.
But the most interesting thing that I learned was that basically the Coliseum was almost a theater. There main goal was to entertain people, so they had tons of props(trees, bushes, random small animals that the bigger animals could eat.) The gladiators were usually slaves or prisoners of war, but they were prized objects and were treated like celebrities. They were actually very skilled fighters though, because they had to be, they never knew what they were fighting, and the stakes were either fight or die. They would have gladiator vs. gladiator, gladiator vs. lion, or both going on at once. There would also, be up to 80, 000 people in the stadium watching these scenes. It wasn't much different than our baseball or football stadiums today actually, except that only children over 12 years old were allowed in and oh yea, the entertainment was people trying to kill eachother.
It was so cool learning this because it filled my mind with images and I stood there imagining what it might have been like. Who knew it was all a big show?! I thought it was just a dirt floor with a gladiator and a lion, but a lot more went into it. After going underground we went to the top level. It was an amazing view of the whole stadium from above(it was a closed off area that we could only get into because of our tour guide.)
After seeing the coliseum, we walked over the pantheon, which is an ancient temple that was turned into a church. It is also the oldest reinforced dome, there is a big hole in the top of the dome and when it rains water comes down, so there are little holes in the ground for the water to drain out. It would have been so cool to be able to see this happen, but it was another sunny, hot day in Rome, so of course we went to get gelato! I got chocolate, banana and strawberry, or in other words the best mixture of gelato ever.
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