The Colosseum.
It's one of the most recognizable landmarks in all of Rome.
Built in under ten years in 70 A.D.
Held over 80,000 spectators.
Hosted some of the most insane events,
and yet remains a marvel of architecture, art and engineering.
Today I'm in Rome with Jobe, an expert historian, to give you a closer
look at this fascinating piece of history.
Jobe, so I'm super glad to meet you.
I'm excited to be here.
I know you came from Philly originally.
Philadelphia.
Yes, I came here 25 years ago, to study abroad
out of Philadelphia Temple University.
And I came here originally, to be honest,
I came originally as a business major, but with a passion for history.
For Roman history.
It kind of came along when I when I came to Rome and fell in love with this city.
Everything Roman, I soaked it in.
I love Rome.
I've been here a few times, but, I mean, I know the basics.
First off, Colosseum, which, by the way, isn't actually the name of the building,
like many things in Rome, is a nickname or second name given to the building.
One of the great things I love about Rome
is, is that everything here is named in a way by the people of the city.
The actual name of this is will be Amphitheater, which is an amphitheater,
and it was built by the Flavius.
They were a dynasty of three emperors. A father and two sons.
And they are the people who built this right.
But the materials are very, very simple.
You have travertine. It's sort of a cheap marble.
It's not marble, but looks like marble. It's limestone.
You have to tufa, which is a sort of like volcanic brick.
And the bread and butter of everything Roman as far as construction,
and that is concrete.
Did they invent concrete?
No, they did not invent concrete,
but Romans were masters of concrete, which I obviously today
we don't think much about it because you mix up a batch at home. Right?
Right. Right. The Romans would do it over 2000 years ago.
Romans were always wanting to be bigger and better than the Greeks.
Yeah.
And with concrete, you can build big and better, but it doesn't cost as much.
And you can do it quickly.
And with this beautiful building that was built almost 2000 years ago,
it only took about eight years to complete the construction of it, which is insane.
Interestingly, the Colosseum wasn't the first thing to be here.
The area is in a valley which would collect
water from a local stream, thus creating a marsh or lake.
Of course, since Romans have always been master plumbers,
they drained the lake and build houses and temples.
A lot of them. Probably a sanitary and fire hazard.
So much so that in 64 A.D., a massive
fire broke out, consuming over two thirds of the city ever.
Emperor Nero, who could have cared less about human lives
other than his own, decided this was the perfect spot for a new palace,
which included a pond and a 120 foot statue of himself.
So humble.
After Nero dies in 68 AD, the area is finally given
back to the people, and thus, the Coliseum was constructed.
What did it originally look like when they would have finished it?
So when people think of Rome, they think of a city of marble and gold.
Right, right, right, right.
Sort of what Augustus said.
But Rome has always been a city of concrete and brick, right?
So what you do is you start off with the basic elements
and then you would face it with more expensive materials.
For example, have you noticed the holes here?
Right. Yeah.
A lot of holes.
Well, these are where you would have the metal clamps,
where you would add the more expensive material.
Ah,so they held it on with metal clamps.
So now it would look as if this this beautiful structure is all marble.
And as far as gold, it will really be just bronze shined up really nice.
And then at that point, it's gold enough.
Right? Yeah. Yeah.
So tell me more about the exterior.
So I see that there's a lot of different types of columns.
Yeah, so you have you can see the three levels, right?
Plus the attic.
OK, so you start from simple to ornate.
Starting off, you have the Doric columns, which is basically the caps, right?
Very simple. Yeah.
And then of course, you get a little bit more ornate is the second ionic.
It was just sort of like almost almost like the ram horns.
Right.
And then of course, the most ornate, the Corinthian is at the very top.
Yeah.
You know, Romans borrowed a lot from Greeks, and they just made it their sort of own.
So this is not a necessarily Roman idea of architecture, not to this level.
This is Grand Central.
To the way they took where they took it.
Yes, that's Roman.
But the idea is Greek. The ability of Romans
to build big but also to keep things still standing.
Right, would be the arch.
I would say the arch is sort of like a kung fu move.
Yeah. Yeah, I like that.
If your legs are together
as someone pushes you, it's easier for you to lose your balance.
But if you have more splay leg stance, yeah, you have more stability
and you're also able to lift heavy objects.
And that's basically the role of an arch.
I mean, I'm curious with the floor and all the different ways
that they integrated
pretty amazing ideas on how they could utilize it down to,
from what I understand, they could even flood this thing for different.
So tell me more about just like what was it like?
So the arena floor is basically a wooden floor covered with sand
to soak up the blood.
And below that you have the hypogeum,
OK, the underground dark,
very hot in the summer cold and damp in the winter,
you know, so just lit up with with with a little with lamps and torches.
And down there you just have a loads of activity.
The first thing you need to do is to get the water right,
which actually is not the hardest part when this was built,
because again, Rome being a swamp and a marsh, one of the first things
they had learned to be able to do is be able to drain.
Right. And also bring fresh water into the city.
And that was normally done with an aqueduct.
So it was an aqueduct to provide water to the Palatine Hill for the elites
and for this area, for the for the people.
So there was already water coming.
You just had to divert the water now to fill it up.
There was about 40 input files.
So we would come in and it would fill it up
so you could fill it up and drain it within a few hours.
So you can have a naval bat in the morning and have
gladiatorial fights in the afternoon.
Yeah, that's crazy.
Yeah.
Which kind of reminds me of like, you know, again,
we assume that what we invent like some of the football stadiums
in the states where, you know, they open up or the floor moves
and they put the grass outside.
Yeah, well, they also they could also close the roof as well.
Oh that's right. Yeah.
With the vela
the awnings, the sails, you can sort of see on the sides
there, these little slits, right.
So you have what you have the cobbles which are basically masts, right?
Where you would have attached the vela and out here
you would have sailors because sailors who were, who are very,
you know, who are, who had experience with these velas, right?
So these sailors then would during the summer
you would be able to unfurl them so that you now you cover
so you won't have the sun, the hot Roman sun in your eyes or the heat.
From an engineering standpoint, we're just geniuses.
They were able to create these spectacles that you can never see anywhere else.
Oh, yeah. Anywhere else in the Roman world.
Well, in speaking to that, because, you know, again, from your outside
of like watching movies and you know what, you know, just from rumors.
So give us some more insight in like so what would I or could I go see that
might happen
in the Colosseum for an event or multiple events?
OK, so let's take
when it first opened up in 80 A.D.
under Titus and he had 100 days 100 continuous games,
oh my God. That's somewhere upwards to 9000 animals were, were killed.
So what do you have?
So basically and these are all these are all private sponsored by the way.
By the Roman this is way again of sort of promoting yourself
maybe you're making a run for the Senate or for a specific position.
You want to be consul which is basically a president or
Prime minister. Yeah.
And you want the people you want to get the vote so
you have gains in your name or in your family's name.
You know, you might have a spectacle in the morning.
It could be an animal hunt, right.
Where you would have these gladiators beastieries who are basically animal
trainers and animal hunters.
And they would come out and they would literally go on these hunts.
You would have to recreate battles so, you know, recreate battle.
So then you have slaves, prisoners of war, who would literally go in there
and fight for their lives. Right.
And then that would be the morning show for the lunchtime interval.
That's normally when you would have the executions, right?
Executions of criminals, runaway slaves and enemies of the state.
And Romans are very, very imaginative on how they would execute you.
Beheadings only for a Roman citizen.
You know, you know, just, you know, nice and quick.
That's if we're lucky, but not in there.
We have some very hungry North African lions or Middle
Eastern tigers or European brown bears.
I'm using these three animals, by the way, because they're all extinct.
And reason why they're extinct is because of the Colosseum.
So imagine.
So you're you know, me and you are on a huge seesaw at the bottom.
We're tied up, were naked and on the bottom there.
So and so what you want to be is you want to be in the air, OK?
So so you're trying to sort of
you're trying to just sort of be as light as you can.
You do not want to be overweight.
And what while still not falling off.
Oh, wow.
Because if you fall off, you're just done.
You're done.
And basically and when you fall off, we both we both lose and to
and that was basically to Roman citizens
that would be the sort of the comedic bit of the of today's entertainment.
What caused this to then, you know, be closed down or fire or whatever.
Right. So it really starts with the fall of Rome.
Yeah.
You're also just changing tastes and the rise of Christianity.
Right?
So obviously when Rome fell through the dark ages,
so, you know, there were just weren't and of course, the earthquakes
and whatnot destroyed parts of the building.
So basically I think the it's the last official event
that happened to happen sometime in the middle of the sixth century.
But it wasn't really Romans who did it.
It was the people who eventually conquered Italy and Rome, the astragalus, OK?
And they basically they basically took over Italy.
So again, dark ages. Right, right.
Things in the Dark Ages, this lasts for about a thousand years.
So Dark Ages,
things like building materials.
One of the reasons why you have a lot of these holes, the metal was very important.
Metal became very expensive or rare.
So, you know, so metal just raw materials.
And of course, yes, there's a lot of this is built for other buildings.
Normally that's because of an earthquake.
So it was a big earthquake in 1349 that really took out the south wall.
You can sort of see how this sort of stops here. Yeah.
So this is what it came all the way out here.
And also this you see that wall over there? Yeah.
So this would be the outer ring, right?
And even that is, is restoration work, right?
Right. So just to show you how it would have looked.
So both of those would come up to here, right?
Yeah.
All of that fell down and they use this material to build Saint
Peter's, Palazzo Venezia and other buildings around the city.
So it makes sense like when we talk about
how many different ways it got used, like once it was one thing and then
it became another thing.
And then again and again because we're talking about thousands of years.
Thousands of years.
So this is built, you know, in 80 AD,
So it was it is it is almost 2000 years old.
Right.
You know so yes, for the first couple of hundred years it was used
one way for a few hundred years after that it wasn't used hardly at all.
Right.
And then a couple of hundred years after that it was,
it was used as a way to sort of rebuild the city.
Really goes back to the whole thing about the city being a swamp and a marsh,
the only way reason this city existed is because it was Rome
and Rome was an empire. This is capital.
But if you take that out of the equation, there's no real reason
for you to be here.
Well, Joe, man, so great to meet you.
And thanks so much for giving me some of your.
We got incredible knowledge about the Colosseum in Rome.
It's just so great to meet you and to watch for 25 years.
You've lived your amazing years. Yeah.
Seems like yesterday.
I'll tell you, this is an awesome experience for myself as well.
I love Rome. I love to share it.