Roman Colosseum: Layout, Architecture, Components | Early European History And Religion

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LAYOUT OF THE COLOSSEUM

The Colosseum — known in Roman times as the Flavian Amphitheater — is an egg-shaped amphitheater Begun by Vespasianand completed a decade later by his son Titus in A.D. 80 , it had a capacity of 50,000 to 75,000 people (depending on who's doing the counting) and was in use for almost 500 years.

Eighty numbered entrances made it easy for the Roman multitudes to find their appropriate places in the Colosseum. by contrast the interior of the Pompeian amphitheater was reached through two passages and by three stairways only. Much of the Pompeii amphitheater was below ground level; all the corresponding parts of the Colosseum were above street level, the walls rising to a height of nearly 49 meters (160 feet). This gave opportunity for the same architectural magnificence that had distinguished the Roman theater from that of the Greeks. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932) |+|]

The interior form of the Colosseum is an ellipse with axes of 189 and 156 meters (620 and 513 feet); the building covers nearly 2.4 hectares (six acres) of ground. The arena is also an ellipse, its axes measuring 87 and 55 meters (287 and 180 feet). The width of the space appropriated for the spectators is, therefore, 51 meters (166 1/2 feet) all around the arena. It will be noticed, too, that subterranean chambers were constructed under the whole building, including the arena. These furnished room for the regiments of gladiators, the dens of wild beasts, the machinery for the transformation scenes that Gibbon has described in the twelfth chapter of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and above all for the vast number of water and drainage pipes that made it possible to turn the arena into a lake at a moment’s notice and as quickly to get rid of the water. |+|

The wall that surrounded the arena was 4.5 meters (15 feet) high; it was faced with rollers and was defended, like the one at Pompeii, by a grating or network of metal above it. The top of the wall was level with the floor of the lowest range of seats, called the podium, as in the circus, and had room for two, or at the most three, rows of marble chairs. These were for the use of the emperor and the imperial family, the giver of the games, the magistrates, senators, Vestal Virgins, ambassadors of foreign states, and other persons of consequence. |+|

Walls buttressed and supported the cavea, and gave entrance to the staircases which led to the vomitoria, served as a "foyer" where the crowd could walk about before the show and between the acts, and gave shelter against sun and shower. The best places on the level of the podium were, of course, those which faced the two ends of the shorter axis: the pulvinar of the emperor and the imperial family on the northern side, and on the southern the seats of the praefectus urbi and the magistrates. But it is certain that even the puttati, that is to say the poor people, clad in brown stuffs, who rubbed elbows in the top gallery, were able to follow the vicissitudes of the mortal dramas which succeeded each other in the arena. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Seating at of the Colosseum

Colosseum at nigh

Vertically the circle of seats was divided by vomitoria or sloping corridors which "disgorged" the floods of spectators. The first zone of seats contained twenty rows, the second sixteen. The second was separated from the third by a wall five meters high, pierced by doors and windows. The women were seated here below the terrace which linked it with the outer wall, while on the terrace stood the peregrini and slaves who, excluded from the distribution of entrance tokens, or tesserae, had not been able to secure places on the tiers. Each guest of the emperor or the magistrates had only to direct his steps to the entrance corresponding to the number on his tessera, then to the corresponding maenianum, the section and row. Between the cavea and the outer wall two concentric walls formed a colonnade on the ground floor and on the upper stories a gallery. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

While the Regionaries reckon that the Colosseum contained 87,000 loca, it is calculated that the number of sitting places was 45,000 and of standing places 5,000. It is still possible to trace in the architecture of the building the ingenious devices by which the comings and goings of this multitude were facilitated. There were 80 entrance arches in the circuit of the building; of these, the four at the extremities of the two axes were forbidden to the public and not numbered. The others were numbered I to LXXVI.

The seats were arranged in three tiers (maeniana), one above the other, separated by broad passageways and rising more steeply the farther they were from the arena, and were crowned by an open gallery. In the plan the podium is marked A. Four meters (12 feet) above it begins the first maenianum (B), with fourteen rows of seats reserved for members of the equestrian order. Then came a broad praecinctio and after it the second maenianum (C), intended for ordinary citizens. Back of this was a wall of considerable height, and above it the third maenianum (D), supplied with rough wooden benches for the lowest classes, foreigners, slaves, and the like. The row of pillars along the front of this section made the distant view all the worse. Above this was an open gallery (E), in which women found an unwelcome place. No other seats were open to them unless they were of sufficient distinction to claim a place upon the podium. At the very top of the outside wall was a terrace (F), in which were fixed masts to support the awnings that could be spread to give protection to those sections lying in the sun. The seating capacity of the Colosseum was said to have been eighty thousand, with standing room for twenty thousand more. |+|

Helen Brown wrote in The Telegraph: On one level, in building the Colosseum, Vespasian — the first emperor to rise to power from the middle-ranking equestrian class — was making a gesture in support of the Roman people. However, the seating in his grand new amphitheater, divided along class lines, served only to reinforce the strict social hierarchy; and there is more than a suggestion that the spectaculars staged there were above all a cynical means of distracting the masses from -bigger concerns. [Source: Helen Brown, The Telegraph, July 6, 2024]

Architecture of the Colosseum

Keith Hopkins of the University of Cambridge wrote for the BBC: “For all its outside trappings in once glistening local travertine stone, the Colosseum was really a triumph of brick-vaulting and cement. Structurally, the building works by a robust balance of pressures. The huge downward vertical thrust of the external walls matches the outwards thrust of the barrel vaults in the circular promenades, which was itself also relieved by the series of radial walls, built like the spokes of wheel, from the inner ring of the arena. And the sideways thrust of the high heavy stone wall is dispersed via the superimposed rows of arches and compensated by the circularity of the building. [Source: Keith Hopkins, BBC, March 22, 2011 |::|]

“The construction is strikingly different from most Greek and Roman public buildings. They followed the classic model of Greek temples, with their rectangular rows of columns, topped by beams and relieved by a triangular pediment. The invention of arches and vaults, made of brick-faced concrete, allowed Roman architects much greater spans - and more visual variety. Hence the Colosseum's elaborate honeycomb of arches, passages and stairways, which allowed thousand of spectators to get into and watch their murderous games in a custom-made amphitheater. And the Colosseum's imposing exterior was then, as it still is, a marvellous monument to Roman imperial power. |::|

Colosseum interior

“The ordered beauty and formal regularity of the Colosseum's exterior is created by three storeys of superimposed arches with engaged (ie semi-circular) columns. These columns are of different orders on each storey (Tuscan at the bottom, then Ionic, with Corinthian columns in the third storey). The fourth higher blind storey is punctuated by pilasters, decorated with Corinthian capitals. In between the pilasters, are small rectangular windows. Above and between the windows there are stone socles (plinths), which once held the masts used to support the awnings, designed to shade about one third of the spectators (the length of the horizontal poles was limited by the length of Mediterranean pines and the weight of the awnings). If you look upwards, you can still see the holes through which these vertical masts slotted. |::|

“The exterior was decorated at the top with glistening gilded bronze shields, and the arches were filled with painted statues of emperors and gods. Two grand entrances, one at each end of the minor axis, were used by the emperor, as well as by official presenters of shows and no doubt by other grandees. |The entrances were marked by giant porticoes, each topped by a gilded horse-drawn chariot. The emperor also had a private entrance, which went under the seats, and emerged in the imperial box.” |::|

Above each of the windows were fastened three projecting corbels corresponding to three hales in the cornice. These corbels supported the bases of the masts to which on days of strong sun a detachment of sailors from the fleet of Misenum was detailed to attach the strips of giant awning (velaria) which sheltered the fighters in the arena and the spectators in the cavea. The seats began four meters above the arena with a terrace or podium protected by a bronze balustrade. On the podium were ranged the marble seats of the privileged, whose names have been handed down to us. Above these were the tiers for the ordinary public, divided into three zones or maeniana. The lower two were separated from the podium and from each other by circular horizontal corridors (praecinctiones) running between low walls.[Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Construction of the Colosseum

The Colosseum was built of blocks of hard travertine stone extracted from the quarries of Albulae near Tibur (the modern Tivoli) and brought to Rome by a wide road specially constructed for the purpose.[Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Keith Hopkins of the University of Cambridge wrote for the BBC: “The Colosseum was opened in A.D. 80 by Vespasian's son and successor, Titus. Given the scale of the enterprise it was built remarkably quickly. And given the site, in a valley where there was previously a lake, it had to be planned carefully. For example, drains were built eight meters (26 feet) underneath the structure, to take away the streams that flow from the surrounding valleys and hills. Then foundations, roughly in the shape of a doughnut, made of concrete: under the outer walls and seating, they are 12-13 meters(39-42 feet) deep, while under the inner ellipse of the arena, they are only 4 meters (13 feet) deep, and designed in strips beneath each of the concentric walls. Even in this grand design, costs were carefully controlled. [Source: Keith Hopkins, BBC, March 22, 2011 |::|]

Colosseum in 1896

The building forms an oval, 527 meters in circumference, with diameters of 188 and 156 meters, and rears its four-storied walls to a height of 57 meters. Obviously modelled on the rotunda of the theater of Marcellus, the first three stories are formed of three superimposed tiers of arcades, originally ornamented with statues. The three stories differ from each other only in the style of their columns, which are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, respectively. The fourth story, which did not exist in Marcellus' theater, consists of a plain wall, divided by halfengaged pilasters into compartments alternately pierced by windows and fitted with shields of bronze which Domitian set up and which have naturally disappeared.[Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

The basement was originally fitted with a water system which in 80 A.D. could flood the arena in a twinkling and transform it into a naumachia. Later no doubt at the time when Trajan built his Naumachia Vaticana it was provided with cages of masonry, in which the animals could be confined, and also with a system of ramps and hoists, so that they could either be quickly driven up or instantaneously launched into the arena. It is impossible not to admire the Flavian architects who, after draining the stagnum Neronis, had the skill to raise on the site of the old lake a monument so colossal and so perfect.

Planning of the Colosseum

Keith Hopkins of the University of Cambridge wrote for the BBC: The figures above "illustrate the scale of the enterprise and the forethought that went into the design. Over-engineered perhaps, but it has stood the test of time. The spoil from the huge hole dug for the foundations was used to raise the surrounding ground level by almost 7 meters (23 feet), on top of the 4 meters (13 feet) from the debris of Nero's fire, so that the new amphitheater stood up higher in its valley site. The design advantage of looking up at, rather than down on, the amphitheater is obvious. [Source: Keith Hopkins, BBC, March 22, 2011 |::|]

“The name of the architect is unknown, but by analogy with what we know from elsewhere in the ancient world, the design process would have involved floor plans drawn to scale, 3-dimensional scale models, perspective drawings, and for the artisans some full-size design sketches. The basic point being emphasised here is that in this building of huge scale and complexity, much of the detail was worked out before the building started. Indeed the building was created according to a set of architectural principles, or a set of conventions developed in the construction of other amphitheaters.” |::|

Keith Hopkins of the University of Cambridge wrote for the BBC: “The basic design units were multiples of 20 Roman feet (the Roman foot varied, but was around 29.6 centimeters). These conventions were adjusted according to the demands of each site, but the basic pattern is repeated, and much of it is not easily visible to the naked eye. Our unknown architect apparently began with the idea of building an arena measuring 300 x 180 Roman feet. The ideal ratio of the period was considered to be 5:3. By convention also, the width of the auditorium equalled the width of the arena, and in the Colosseum, it also surprisingly equalled the height of the external facade. These symmetries probably impressed both architect and emperor. [Source: Keith Hopkins, BBC, March 22, 2011 |::|]

“So the total length of the Colosseum was originally planned, according to one convincing reconstruction, as 660 Roman feet long (300 + 360) and 540 Roman feet wide The perimeter can be roughly calculated as (L + W) x /2 or 1,885 Roman feet (or more precisely, using trigonometry). Did the perimeter size matter? Yes, because the perimeter had to be split up among a grand number of equally sized entrance arches (both Capua and the Colosseum had 80 entrance arches, Verona and Puteoli 72 etc). Entrance arches in grand amphitheaters were 20 Roman feet wide, with 3 Roman feet extra for the columns in between. So the Colosseum received a perimeter of 1,835 Roman feet (80x 23 =1840), and the arena was adjusted to 280 x 168 (still 5:3). |::|

Colosseum today

“Similar numerical patterns can be seen in the Colosseum's famous façade. For example, the height of the two middle stories is twice the inter-columnar width. Or seen another way, the horizontal gap between the piers (15 Roman feet) equals the vertical height from the pier to the springing of the arch. So we are confronted visually with a series of squares within the framing of the arches. These are not accidents, but details of design, which reflect the architect's preoccupation with principles of number, and provide the viewer (however unconscious he or she may be) with a steady and harmonious rhythm in the façade.” |::|

Colosseum Arena

The arena, 86 by 54. meters in diameter, enclosed an area of 3,500 square meters. It was surrounded by a metal grating, 4 meters in front of the base of the podium, which protected the public from the wild beasts which were loosed into the arena. Before the gladiators entered through one of the arcades of the longer axis, the animals were already imprisoned in the underground chambers of the arena. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” by Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

Keith Hopkins of the University of Cambridge wrote for the BBC: “The arena itself was probably covered by a good 15 centimeters of sand (harena), sometimes dyed red to disguise blood. And, as is evident in Ridley Scott's film Gladiator (2000), the arena was dotted with trap-doors designed to let animals leap dramatically into the fray. The arena was also sometimes decorated with elaborate stage scenery, so that the ritual murder could be varied with theatrical tales.

“When the Colosseum opened in A.D. 80, Titus staged a sea-fight there (in about one metre of water), and recent research has shown convincingly that the amphitheater had no basement at this time. But the rivalrous brother of Titus, Domitian (emperor 81-96), was quick to have a basement built - with ring-formed walls and narrow passages. In this confined space, animals and their keepers, fighters, slaves and stage-hands toiled in the almost total darkness to bring pleasure to Romans. A series of winches and the capstans would have allowed teams of slaves to pull in unison and hoist heavy animals from the basement to the main arena, and this machinery has been reconstructed, in part, from ancient drawings - aided by the bronze fittings that still survive in the basement's floor. The rope-burns of the hoists are still visible in the stone of the lift-shafts. [Source: Keith Hopkins, BBC, March 22, 2011 |::|]

Colosseum Hypogeum

The maze of structures in the middle of the Colosseum's arena today are the remains of the hypogeum, a complex of rooms, stalls, lifts, tunnels and chambers that were once covered by a wooden floor that has since disappeared. Some of stalls held wild animals, lions and gladiators. The word hypogeum comes from the Greek word for “underground." Today they are home to some of the hundred of alley cats that now call the Colosseum home.

Tom Mueller wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “The floor of the colosseum, where you might expect to see a smooth ellipse of sand, is instead a bewildering array of masonry walls shaped in concentric rings, whorls and chambers, like a huge thumbprint. The confusion is compounded as you descend a long stairway at the eastern end of the stadium and enter ruins that were hidden beneath a wooden floor during the nearly five centuries the arena was in use, beginning with its inauguration in A.D. 80. Weeds grow waist-high between flagstones; caper and fig trees sprout from dank walls, which are a patchwork of travertine slabs, tufa blocks and brickwork. The walls and the floor bear numerous slots, grooves and abrasions, obviously made with great care, but for purposes that you can only guess. [Source: Tom Mueller, Smithsonian magazine, January 2011]

The leading authority on the hypogeum is Heinz-Jürgen Beste of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. Beste has spent much of the past 14 years deciphering the hypogeum. On working in the hypogeum, Beste said, “It was as hot as a boiler room in the summer, humid and cold in winter, and filled all year round with strong smells, from the smoke, the sweating workmen packed in the narrow corridors, the reek of the wild animals...The noise was overwhelming — creaking machinery, people shouting and animals growling, the signals made by organs, horns or drums to coordinate the complex series of tasks people had to carry out, and, of course, the din of the fighting going on just overhead, with the roaring crowd."

Components of the Hypogeum

Beste spent four years documenting the stonework under the arena. Andrew Curry wrote in National Geographic: He revealed traces of an ingenious system of platforms, elevators, winches, and ramps, manned by hundreds of stage technicians and animal handlers. Through dozens of trapdoors in the arena floor, handlers could release animals directly into the ring for staged hunts, called venationes, that typically served as the appetizer for gladiator fights. Elaborate, painted sets would lift straight out of the arena floor, and elevators might have popped gladiators directly into the ring. “Spectators didn’t know what would open when, or where,” Beste says. The system was found on a simpler scale at dozens of provincial amphitheaters across the empire, epitomized the draw of the games. From animal hunts to gladiator fights, everything about the events was calculated to keep fans on the edge of their stone seats. Suspense, not brutality, was the lifeblood of the games.[Source:Andrew Curry, National Geographic, July 20, 2021]

imagining the inner workings of the hypogeum

Mueller wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “At the peak of its operation, Beste concluded, the hypogeum contained 60 capstans, each two stories tall and turned by four men per level. Forty of these capstans lifted animal cages throughout the arena, while the remaining 20 were used to raise scenery sitting on hinged platforms measuring 12 by 15 feet. “See where a semicircular slice has been chipped out of the wall," Beste told Smithsonian magazine, resting a hand on the brickwork. The groove, he added, created room for the four arms of a cross-shaped, vertical winch called a capstan, which men would push as they walked in a circle. The capstan post rested in a hole that Beste indicated with his toe. “A team of workmen at the capstan could raise a cage with a bear, leopard or lion inside into position just below the level of the arena. Nothing bigger than a lion would have fit." He pointed out a diagonal slot angling down from the top of the wall to where the cage would have hung. “A wooden ramp slid into that slot, allowing the animal to climb from the cage straight into the arena," he said. [Source: Tom Mueller, Smithsonian magazine, January 2011]

Beste also identified 28 smaller platforms (roughly 3 by 3 feet) around the outer rim of the arena — also used for scenery — that were operated through a system of cables, ramps, hoists and counterweights. He even discovered traces of runoff canals that he believes were used to drain the Colosseum after it was flooded from a nearby aqueduct, in order to stage naumachiae, or mock sea battles. The Romans re-enacted these naval engagements with scaled-down warships maneuvering in water three to five feet deep. To create this artificial lake, Colosseum stagehands first removed the arena floor and its underlying wood supports — vertical posts and horizontal beams that left imprints still visible in the retaining wall around the arena floor. (The soggy spectacles ended in the late first century A.D., when the Romans replaced the wood supports with masonry walls, making flood- ing the arena impossible.)

Beste says the hypogeum itself had a lot in common with a huge sailing ship. The underground staging area had “countless ropes, pulleys and other wood and metal mechanisms housed in very limited space, all requiring endless training and drilling to run smoothly during a show. Like a ship, too, everything could be disassembled and stored neatly away when it was not being used." All that ingenuity served a single purpose: to delight spectators and ensure the success of shows that both celebrated and embodied the grandeur of Rome.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024