Living up to the Hype: The Colosseum

Dwayne and I choose carefully which activities are mandatory for all the kids and a private guided tour of the Colosseum and adjacent Forum made the cut. Between having a great guide who was excellent with “this-is-going-to-be-boring” kid attitudes and a pretty cool place to visit, it was a pretty decent day*.

One of the best parts of the tour was that it came with a booklet of artists’ depictions of what the Colloseum looked like back in its heyday and how it was used. Unfortunately, we lost the pictures before we left, but it helped understand what we were looking at now and how it was used then.

We got to be on the floor, overlooking the underground animal cages. There were pulley systems and trap doors to not only get the animals up to the flighting floor, but also to have them pop out of unexpected locations for better thrilling entertainment.

I loved our guide but he did like to ruin the Hollywood gladiator myths. There is no evidence of an emperor’s thumbs up or down. Gladiators were too expensive to train and replace to casually kill them off, and each only fought 1-2 times a year. And if the Colloseum ever did have full size boat battles, it would have happened in its first ten years before the underground labyrinth was constructed. Also, the stadium was designed to get thousands of people in and out quickly, but not so much for ships. How disappointing. Luckily, our girls were happy to break the rules and give Gladiator Papa a life or death sentence after falling to the champion, Wirey Wes.

*Bonus Material* I give you…the Colosseum toilets. A reused (notice I didn’t write “reusable”) sponge was part of the experience.

Constantine’s Arch from a Colloseum window.

The Forum, basically the public meeting place, was a field of lovely ruins adjacent to the Colloseum and Palantine Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome, and where the town was mythically born. It’s pretty fun to look out and see all these ancient Lego pieces cast around.