It’s Palm Sunday and we are in Rome going to visit the Colosseum. The Colosseum is the biggest amphitheatre built over 2000 years ago by the Romans!! One thing that caught my attention was how the Colosseum was built. The slabs of marble were not glued or cemented together they were just piled one on top of the other. Now I understand how they would build the columns but imagine how they would build the arches. I learned from our tour guide that they had to cut the slabs of marble at certain angles and put them together like a puzzle so that each piece of marble would stay in place.
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| Roman Forum |
Inside the theatre the Romans sat according to their social class to watch games, plays, animal hunts and executions. For example, the emperor and other important people sat at the bottom closest to the stage and women had to STAND at the very top if they wanted to watch the games – poor them! The games would usually include gladiators vs. gladiators, or gladiators vs. animals. Our tour guide told us that the animals came from as far away as Africa and Asia.
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| Colosseum |
The different animals included: giraffes, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, bears, lions, etc... We got to see where the elephant entrance was. Cellars were located under the arena packed with food, costumes, animals, weapons and 28 elevators that would lead up to the arena. The Colosseum held 50,000-80,000 people and the shows went on 300 days/year for 400 years.
My favourite part of visiting Rome was our visit to the Colosseum and learning about it.
Just in case I didn’t get enough of Roman ruins in Rome, we then went to Pompeii to see a lot more……how interesting!
Maddy
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| In front of Trevi Fountain |
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| Ahhh - In front of the Spanish Steps |
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| Pompei with Vesuvius in the background |
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| What a way to die! |
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| When's this over? |
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| Inside of the Pantheon |
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