Roman Colosseum

As promised, a separate blog for the Colosseum respecting its architecture and the importance attached with it.

Now, what is this Colosseum? This is a very very ancient amphitheatre which the Roman King Vespasian ad built to show how powerful a king he is.

Although, it was not completed when he was alive, his son completed it and let open the Colosseum for a 100 day game show.

Now, what were these games? Long back then in Rome, Gladiators fighting between themselves or with animals was very famous. You cannot imagine that it used to be a do or die fight and that the upper crust of the society used these games for their entertainment.

The king wanted to popularize these kind of games and hence, built this amphitheatre where the games can be hosted and the public can watch it.

This structure is really magnificent. You should watch the videos on youtube to understand how this was build. Back then, all the Romans knew were to build “Archs”. They used this technique to build many many magnificent structures. Its like you keep joining an arch and there, you build a tower, you build a Arena (Colosseum) and what not?

You can control the weight the arch can withstand in many ways. An extensive article about it is here.

You can imagine that the division in the society was very much existed that time. The arena audience area was divided by classes. For the Kingly class, the next, the next, the next and so on.

The Colosseum later lost its significance after a lot of series of fires and earthquakes e wodden upper levels and the structure that was built to protect the spectators from fire. A lot of rules who took over took some steps to rebuild parts of which was burnt/damaged. Later during the Medieval and Modern era, it was used as a quarry to supply raw materials like brick, marbles etc to the other buildings that were being built. However, in the later part of the Modern Era, the Vatican endorsed it as a sacred site where Christians were Martyred. The Colosseum is today one of Rome's most popular tourist attractions, receiving millions of visitors annually.

The cross sections that have been taken to analyse the construction methods and the materials used for it and so on, is very interesting when you take the audio guide along with the tickets at the counter.

One thing that I learn during my European tour to several cities/countries, you can do a lot of good to yourself and the place you are visiting by briefly just reading about the place before you venture on it.