The Flavian emperors and the games
Follow the routes of gladiators and spectators through Rome’s Flavian Amphitheatre, from the numbered entrances to the underground passages where crews prepared the emperor’s shows.
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Rome, Italy
INTRODUCTION
From the upper visitor level of the Colosseum, the curve of the building draws your eye down towards a maze of brick and stone. Those walls once lay beneath a wooden arena floor. Above them, the spectators sat in tiers, with a person’s place in Roman society determining how close they could get to the action.
Senators sat near the emperor, while men trained to fight faced one another below. Everyone watched the same contest from places assigned by rank.
The surviving entrances, galleries and underground passages show how the Flavian emperors turned an afternoon’s entertainment into a display of who held power. Our Rome history and travel guide puts the arena in the context of the wider city.
KEY HISTORICAL MOMENT
Titus inaugurated the amphitheatre in AD 80 with a programme remembered for lasting one hundred days. It was a public debut for a building begun under his father, Vespasian. The opening gave the new ruling family a place to stage spectacles on a scale that would have been difficult to match in a temporary venue.
ORIGINS
Vespasian came to power in AD 69 after a civil war. In the following decade, he began building an amphitheatre in the valley between the Palatine, Esquiline and Caelian hills. The site had held the artificial lake of Nero’s Golden House, a palace complex laid out after the great fire of AD 64.
Replacing the lake with a venue for public shows gave the Flavians a visible way to distance themselves from Nero. A space laid out for the use of an imperial household now received large crowds, with its own entrances and seating for the ruling household.
Titus opened the arena after Vespasian’s death. His younger brother Domitian subsequently replaced the timber installations beneath the arena with masonry corridors. The formal name Flavian Amphitheatre reflects the dynasty behind the project. Its familiar name is associated with the colossal statue that stood nearby, originally made in Nero’s likeness.
IMPERIAL SPECTACLE
Gladiators included enslaved people, prisoners of war and free volunteers. Schools trained fighters in distinct roles, each with its own equipment. A lightly equipped retiarius used a net and trident against a secutor, whose smooth helmet offered fewer places for the net to catch.
A defeated fighter could survive a bout. That possibility mattered for men whose training took time and whose appearance cost a sponsor money. Other spectacles, including hunts and public executions, used the same floor. A trained animal hunter and a condemned person exposed to a beast faced very different prospects.
Admission to the games was free, and numbered entrances directed spectators to their assigned sections. Senators sat near the floor, with the equestrian order above them. People lower in the social hierarchy watched from farther away. The imperial balcony looked along the shorter axis, across the width of the arena.
The imperial party was itself on view. The emperor’s position let other spectators see who presided over the games, while the placement of the senators and equestrians set out the order of precedence for the rest of the crowd.
ACROSS CENTURIES
A fire in AD 217 damaged the amphitheatre and destroyed its underground installations. The building reopened in AD 222, and the passages below the floor were altered again over time. Repairs after later earthquakes kept parts of the building in use as the era of public spectacles drew to a close.
In the Middle Ages, people lived and worked in rooms beneath the stands. The Frangipane family fortified part of the building, and later builders recovered stone from the ruin. The gaps on the south side owe their shape to both structural collapse and the long removal of building material.
In the early nineteenth century, Raffaele Stern and Giuseppe Valadier designed buttresses to hold the ends of the surviving outer wall. Stern braced the broken edge with a solid wedge. Valadier’s support uses a succession of arches that echoes the ancient façade. Both are now part of the silhouette seen from the square.
INTERESTING FACTS
The bronze letters of the original dedication disappeared, but their fixing holes survived in a reused block. By studying the pattern, epigrapher Géza Alföldy reconstructed wording that credited the building to proceeds from war booty. Scholars link that money to the Flavian campaign in Judaea, which culminated in the capture of Jerusalem in AD 70.
A system of canvas awnings known as the velarium shaded spectators. Sailors from the fleet based at Misenum were responsible for operating it. Their work belonged to a wider network around the amphitheatre that included barracks, weapon stores and workshops. Much of the labour behind a show took place away from the arena itself.
Archaeologists have found dice and playing pieces made of bone and glass among the objects associated with the stands. Some pieces were fashioned from fragments of amphorae. Together with boards scratched into stone, they show how spectators filled intervals in the programme. Finds of food remains and crockery suggest another way they passed the time.
Domitian established the Ludus Magnus, the largest of the gladiator schools beside the amphitheatre. Its practice arena copied the shape of the Colosseum on a smaller scale, with accommodation arranged around it. A covered passage once linked the training complex to the amphitheatre, giving fighters a route into the building below the level of the street.
WHAT TO SEE & DO
Start in the piazza on the side facing Via dei Fori Imperiali. Look above the surviving entrance arches for Roman numerals cut into the stone. They make sense as part of a crowd management system that began outside the building.
Look up at the three rows of arches and the flatter pilasters on the solid top storey. Then compare the north side with the broken outline to the south. Seen from the piazza, the missing outer wall lets you see into the layers of passages behind it.
From the second level, look for the long central passage beneath the arena and the shorter corridors beside it. The surviving walls reveal how much space the builders set aside for work hidden from spectators. Winches and pulleys raised cages to openings in the floor, where animals could be released into the arena.
A modern platform covers part of the arena. Use its height to picture where the ancient wooden floor separated the performers above from the crews below. Access onto the platform depends on your ticket.
Allow time for the museum on the second level, especially if you want to understand what happened here between the Roman games and the restorations. Its exhibits trace later uses of the amphitheatre as well as the original spectacles.
Look for Carlo Lucangeli’s wooden model if it is on display. Its cutaway sections show the stairways and passages in relation to the seating. Compare that orderly plan with the fragmentary spaces you have just seen from the gallery.
After leaving the amphitheatre, walk east to the corner of Via Labicana and Via di San Giovanni in Laterano. Look down into the excavated site from the street. The visible curve of the practice arena is the clearest clue to the layout.
Only part of the school has been uncovered. The street view shows how close the training ground stood to the place where fighters performed. Look beyond the curve for the remains of the rooms that bordered the courtyard.
WHY VISIT?
The Colosseum rewards anyone who likes working out how a building was used. Its entrances, ring corridors and seating levels still make sense together. You can follow the route from the street to a view over the arena and judge what a difference a few tiers would have made to a spectator.
Pair it with the Roman Forum if you have half a day. There, the platforms, temples and meeting places help explain the public life of the people whose social ranks shaped the seating at the amphitheatre.
PLAN YOUR VISIT
The Colosseum stands in Piazza del Colosseo. Take Metro Line B to Colosseo or Line C to Colosseo–Fori Imperiali. Allow time to reach the entrance shown on your ticket, especially if you plan to look around the outside first. The park publishes directions to each site.
Set aside around an hour for the standard interior route, with extra time for security and the exterior. This is a planning estimate. The park allows up to 75 minutes inside the Colosseum on the standard 24-hour ticket and up to 90 minutes on the underground and arena ticket.
The Colosseum normally opens at 08:30. Closing time varies by season, with last admission generally an hour before closing. Check the official opening calendar for your date, particularly if you are combining the amphitheatre with the Forum and Palatine.
Choose a timed Colosseum slot through the official ticket site. The standard ticket includes the first and second levels, the museum and a separate visit to the Forum and Palatine. For the underground, select the Full Experience Underground and Arena option. Bring the original photo identification document matching the name on your ticket.
The Colosseum has lifts. If you need a step-free route, check the park’s accessibility information for the areas on your ticket. Wear shoes with good grip for uneven paving, especially if you are continuing to the Forum and Palatine.
Location
Piazza del Colosseo, Rome
Site type
Roman amphitheatre
Construction begun
AD 70s, under Vespasian
Inauguration
AD 80, under Titus
Dynasty
Flavian
Ancient spectacles
Gladiatorial bouts and animal hunts
Highlights
Arena view and Colosseum Museum
Suggested visit
Around 1 hour inside (editorial estimate)
Official information for visiting the Colosseum
EXPLORE MORE
Continue your visit with our wider Rome guide.
Plan time for ancient monuments, museums and neighbourhood walks.
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