The University of Sydney News – 24 February 2000Passion plays that inspired violence in Rome – By Anne Sarzin When Associate Professor Nerida Newbigin travels to Rome in September to meet the Pope at the Roman Church’s Jubilee – marking the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ – she will also get a chance to …
The Golden House(that is the meaning of Domus Aurea), located between the Esquiline and Palatine Hills, was one of Nero‘s most extravagant projects. As everybody knows, two-thirds of the city of Rome were destroyed by a great fire in 64 AD. Nero used most of this land as a site for his new palace. It was not so …
Rome has been hitby many earthquakes during the centuries.This list was compiled by Roberto Luciani (Underground Rome): Abandoning the stones – by Sergej Krivonogov
Recent studieshave discovered that from as early as the IV century materials were taken away from the Colosseum, and that some drains were obstructed by the end of the same century. At the beginning of the V century the water/drainage system, at least in the south western sector, had stopped working, as the lead piping and fountains …
In 1381a section of the Colosseum was donated to the religious group called Confraternita del Santissimo Salvatore ad Sancta Sanctorum, also called del Gonfalone, which from 1490 to 1539 was granted permission to hold Passion plays in the amphitheatre. By now, the function of the amphitheatre had been rediscovered by the humanists, and it had become commonplace …
The modern architectural studyof the Colosseum started with Carlo Fontana, who, around 1720, made a survey of the amphitheatre and studied its geometric proportions. Most of the ground floor of the building was by now almost submerged by earth and debris accumulated over the centuries, and the arches were used as a deposit for manure. In …
For many centuries,before the cleaning carried out in the 19th century by archaeologists and engineers, the Colosseum had been overgrown with plants and trees. For a long time there had been orchards and gardens, and in the dark of the arches or clinging to the top of the walls could be found all kinds of …
Comparethe perspective of the picture by Giovanni Antonio Canal, called Il Canaletto, and the real one: Il Canaletto My photograph
The inaugurationof the Roman amphitheatre must have been an unforgettable event. The historian Dio Cassius wrote, about it: “Most of what he [Titus] did was not characterized by anything noteworthy, but in dedicating the hunting-theatre (Amphitheatrum Flavium) and the baths that bear his name, he produced many remarkable spectacles. There was a battle between cranes and also between …
TITUS bronze sestertius 80 ADEuro, 5 cents, 2003 This is a serious page on Roman coins, weights and measures. If you are looking for the Colosseum on coins click here. The principal Roman coinswere the as, made of copper; the sestertius, the quinarius, the silver denarius and the golden aureus.1. The as, the unit of the Roman currency, was originally one pound of …
