The Colosseum

---

Map

The Colosseum

---

The Amphitheatrum Flavium, as the Colosseum was originally called, is the most famous amphitheatre in the world as well as the largest. It was begun by the emperor Vespasian ( r. 69-79), circa 70 CE, and completed by his son and heir Titus (r. 79-81) some ten years later. 

In his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818) Lord Byron describes the Colosseum as a 'vast and wondrous monument...a ruin-yet what a ruin.' The north-east side is the only part of the amphitheatre that survives intact. Rising to a height of 47 metres it is made up of four storeys. The first three storeys have rows of arches with engaged columns. The arches of the second and third storeys were once adorned with statues, all of which disappeared centuries ago. 

Arena

The ground-plan of the Colosseum is oval-shaped, 189 metres long and 156 metres wide. Its circumference is 545 metres and it sits on a concrete platform 13 metres deep. The amphitheatre could seat roughly 50,000 spectators. In the centre was the arena (83 metres by 48 metres), so called because the wooden floor was covered with a thick layer of sand (harenae in Latin).

Base of the statue of Nero

Why is it called the Colosseum?

The answer lies a few metres from the entrance to the amphitheatre, in the form of a marble plaque, which marks the spot where a colossal statue once stood. Made of gilded bronze for the emperor Nero (r. 54-68), the statue was, reportedly, between 30 and 35 metres high. It is not known (accounts vary) whether the statue depicted Nero or Sol, the Roman god of the sun. Perhaps, it depicted Nero as Sol. We may never know, but what we do know is that the statue long outlasted Nero (who committed suicide on June 9th, 68), albeit with a series of alterations to its facial features (to remove any resemblance to the emperor). 

Around 128, the emperor Hadrian had the statue moved when work started on the building of the Temple of Venus and Roma, which stands to the west of the Colosseum. It took a team of 24 elephants to move the statue the short distance to its place by the amphitheatre. It is not known when the Colossus was toppled and its bronze recycled, but at some point the Romans simply transferred its name to the adjacent amphitheatre. 

It may well have been the statue and not, as was generally assumed, the amphitheatre, which was the subject of a famous 8th century prophecy, attributed (wrongly) to the Venerable Bede (673-735): 'Quandiu stat Colisaeus, stat et Roma; quando cadet Colisaeus, cadet et Roma. Quando cadet Roma, cadet et Mundus'. In Byron's translation this became: 'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall. And when Rome falls--the world' (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV, Stanza 124). 

The Decline and Fall of the Colosseum

Gladiatorial combat was banned in the early 5th century as Christianity spread. Animal hunts continued until 523 CE. Severe earthquakes in 847 and 1349 led to the collapse of the outer southern wall. 

Pre-1871 photograph of the Stations of the Cross

In the Holy Year of 1675, as part of the Jubilee celebrations, Pope Clement X (r. 1670-76) declared the Colosseum to be a sacred site of martyrdom for all the Christians who had perished there. A cross was duly erected in the centre of the arena.

Plaque to Pope Benedict XIV

In the Holy Year of 1750, Pope Benedict XIV (r. 1740-58) dedicated the Colosseum to the 'Passion of Christ and the Holy Martyrs' and installed the fourteen Stations of the Cross around the perimeter of the arena. Pope Benedict XIV also had a plaque erected on the exterior of the building so that the memory of the fortitude of the martyrs should not fade. ​

​The stations and cross were removed during the radical restoration of the Colosseum during the last quarter of the 19th century. 

---