THE AWNING The following “lecture” can be found on the site http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/colosseum/, but I have copied the text here. The main subject of the conversation regards the experiments made in order to reproduce the system of rigging up the awning of the Colosseum. It is full of interesting information. Owain Roberts and classicist Norma Goldman answer …
The recent restoration works on the Colosseum (from: https://www.todsgroup.com/en/sustainability/colosseum)(photographs by A. Pepe) Tod’s Group is supporting the restoration of the Colosseum, the renowned symbol of Italian history.The “intervention plan” for the restoration of the Flavian amphitheatre is a project requested by the government commissioner for Rome’s archaeological areas and Ancient Ostia in collaboration with the …
Several materialswere employed for the building of the Colosseum, all of them easily found or produced in the Roman area: first of all there is the travertino, a limestone, then tuff for the other pillars and radial walls, tiles for the floors of the upper storeys and the walls; finally, concrete (a.k.a. cement) for the …
In the valley of the Colosseumthere is a layer of clay under many metres of sand and silt. In prehistoric times the ground level was about 10-15 metres lower than it is today. Rain and water from streams gathered in the valley, and, depending on the season, formed a marsh or a little lake in the depression. From …
The amphitheatre is a Roman invention, but … What is an amphitheatre?IMO nobody has explained it better than Bill Thayers in his page on the subject: Now before we start, repeat after me: an amphitheatre and a theatre are different types of buildings.Amphi-theatres are “theatres in the round”: amphi– means “around” in Greek.A theatre is …
Once there was a lake…The site of the Colosseum is in fact a depression among the hills of Rome: the Palatine on its south-western side, the Velia on the western side, the last slopes of the Esquiline hill, also called Colle Oppio (now a park) on the northern side and the Celio on the Eastern side. The Velia, …
It is reasonable to thinkthat even the ancients considered the Colosseum an architectural wonder, and that its image circulated in the ancient world. As far as we know, the only images of the amphitheatre we have from the antiquity are on some coins.We have coins bearing the image of the Colosseum that were minted during …
The original sitewas deeply transformed in order to build the amphitheatre. First of all, some enormous drains were built in order to ensure an adequate drainage towards the Circus Maximus (a part of these drains was lost when the metro line was built). After the area was completely drained, the excavation started, and it lasted until it …
HOW WAS THE COLOSSEUM BUILT ?The following is my translation of the chapter on the building philosophy of the Colosseum (from Giuseppe Cozzo, Il Colosseo – Fratelli Palombi Editori – Roma, 1971). An approximate estimate of the workers necessary to build the amphitheatre, in the brief span of time confirmed by historical documents, concluded that …
The Colosseumis generally supposed to be elliptical, but the curve of the arena and of the remaining facade, which has now been measured to a high degree of accuracy, does not coincide exactly with a perfect ellipse. It is in fact an ovoid (a polycentric curve, i.e. a curve with more than one centre), but …
