During the summer of 2019 (24th of May), I had an opportunity to visit Rome along with my wife and few other like minded friends. Our first tourist attraction spot was Colosseum!
How to get there:
Colosseum is less than 2km away from the train station, Roma Termini. We stayed close to the station, in hotel Augusta Lucilla Palace. Colosseum was at a walking distance from our hotel.
Tickets:
We went there late in the afternoon. We didn't have any pre-booked tours, however at Colosseum we booked a tour through an agency as many agents approached tourists with intriguing bits of information. Bargaining with the "localites" is a must as they come up with jaw dropping prices for us tourists. We got a great deal for the tour of 6.
The tour:
A lady guided us throughout the tour. She did a great job! She had deep knowledge about the structures and briefed us with their historical backgrounds. The place was beautiful in it's own way and we feel lucky to have visited Colosseum once in our life.
What we learned:
It was built sometime in 100 BC. As you can make out from the picture, it is a gigantic oval shaped amphitheatre. Local marble, called Traventino, was used to build this structure. This structure has 80 arches in total, which served as entrance gates for the Colosseum. Of these, 72 arches are open for public and 8 arches are reserved for VIPs.
The main arena is 72 x 44 meters and is surrounded by a 6 level seating, which can hold over 50000 people. The lowest level was reserved for emperors and VIPs.
Colosseum was mainly used for Gladiator fighting. When it was opened for the very first time, games were held for more than 100 consecutive days.
In those days, many soldiers chose to or were forced to become gladiators,who fought with each other , animals or even a combination of both. The person who loses the game would be killed depending on the votes from the audience and the emperor. The votes from the audience were clearly conveyed in the form of yelling either by saying "kill !kill!" or "live! live!".
We were impressed with the sheer size of this structure and detailing of the design elements. It was interesting to learn about the tradition of gladiator fights. It was fun to watch Gladiator moviie (2000), after returning home from Italy.
Tips:
Please reserve 3 hours for this tour. Takes about 75 minutes to complete Colosseum guided tour. Typically, when you take guided tour package from a travel agency, they cover Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum. We reached late to the venue. Hence we did not have time to cover Palatine Hill and Roman Forum. We had to give it a miss. Our agent was kind enough to offer those to us on the next day for free, but we simply did not have time.
