Colosseum Underground and Arena Floor Guided Tour

Your professional tour guide will certainly take you behind the scenes right into locations that are generally not permitted. And also, see the Palatine Hill and Roman Forum.

Start your guided tour of Rome’s majority of the renowned building with skip the line access straight via the Gladiator’s Gateway. Once the primary way to go out for defeated gladiators, this unique entry leads you straight to the parts of the Roman Colosseum most visitors do not reach see.

Your very first visit is the Colosseum Underground— the behind-the-scenes location where Roman Gladiators got ready for a fight. Right here, your professional, English-speaking tour guide will certainly get in touch with their historic and also historical knowledge to allow you to visualize the area as it when was. Surroundings and captive wild animals stood prepared to be lifted right into the Arena of Colosseum by skillful stools. You’ll virtually really feel the gladiators’ anxiety and listen to the cry of the blood-thirsty people.

After that, you’ll stroll in the gladiators’ footprints on a partly rebuilt arena level– a special and incredible photo ops. And also unlike the gladiators, you’ll reach rise from the Arena Floor to the Colosseum’s 2nd rate, where followers supported the terrible spectacles below.

The following point on the trip takes you back to the first beginning. The Palatine Hill is the place Romulus selected to locate the Rome that would certainly come to be Rome in 753 BC– a decision that finished in tragedy for his sibling Remus. Right here, steeped in the background, you’ll delight in a magnificent view of your following location: The Roman Forum.

Roman Forum and the Via Sacra, the Spiritual Way, were the heart of Old Rome. Every one of Roman life could be located in this dynamic area: commerce and also trade, political rallies, army ceremonies.

Historical Background

Colosseum is the most important monument of ancient Rome. The construction of the vast building was begun by Vespasian in 72 A. D., on the site of the Stagnum Neronis (a lake near Nero’s house) annexed to the Domus Aurea, and dedicated by Titus in 80 A. D.

It is said that at the dedication of the building 500 ferocious beasts and many gladiators were slain in the arena. The celebration lasted more than three months. In this huge amphitheater, gladiatorial combats, and venations, the slaying of wild beasts, took place, until 405, when they were abolished by Honorius, the Emperor.

Severely damaged by an earthquake in the middle of the V cent, it was converted into a fortress, and during the Middle Ages, (because it was covered with marble) served as a rich source of material for the Popes, who used it for the construction of buildings and monuments.

What we see today is only a pale reflection of its former splendor. The form is elliptical, with the following dimensions: the major axis of the building, 188 meters, the minor axis 156 meters, the circumference 527 meters. The height of the tiers is 57 meters. Three stories are composed of arches supported by piers, which are pierced with niches. In these niches were placed marble statues of divinities, or of important personages.

The fourth floor, with windows placed further apart, is decorated with pilasters and corbels. There were four principal entrances directly into the arena and from the arcades, the spectators had access to the multiple tiers of seats. The Amphitheatre, that could contain more than 50,000 spectators, was composed of a raised platform, and three tiers of seats.

The Emperor’s box was on the raised platform (or podium) that surrounded the arena, and it could be occupied by no one other than the Emperor. The Senators, government officials, and Vestal Virgins also sat here on separate marble thrones. The first tier of seats was for knights and tribunes; the second for citizens, the third tier and the gallery, for the lower classes. In the arena (which measures 76 by 46 meters) we see today vestiges of the subterranean passages and of the elevators to transport the wild beasts released from their cages. These elevators were operated by hand by the captives. The wooden cross in the center of the arena was placed there by Pope Pius IX to consecrate the area. Ascending a modern stairway, we reach the upper galleries.