The Colosseum: Arena of Blood and Flavian Ambition

Why is it significant?

Stand before the towering four-tiered travertine arches of the Colosseum and feel the crushing weight of two millennia of empire.

Key Facts

Listen · 1:34

Stand before the towering four-tiered travertine arches of the Colosseum and feel the crushing weight of two millennia of empire. Commissioned by Emperor Vespasian in seventy AD and inaugurated by his son Titus in eighty AD with one hundred consecutive days of games, this was the largest amphitheater ever constructed in the ancient world, holding up to fifty thousand screaming spectators. The amphitheater takes its name not from its own monumental size, but from the Colossus of Nero, a colossal thirty-five-meter bronze statue of the tyrannical emperor depicted as the sun god Sol that once stood just outside the entrance. Vespasian deliberately built this public entertainment arena directly over the private artificial lake of Nero's hated Golden House, returning the land to the Roman people. Beneath the wooden arena floor, dusted with fine golden sand to soak up blood, lay the hypogeum: a two-story subterranean maze of eighty animal cages, trapdoors, and eighty manual pulley-elevators that hoisted lions, tigers, and bears magically up into the combat arena. Walk west toward the monumental Arch of Constantine framing the entrance to the Forum.