Day 8 - Mediterranean Cruise - Rome Part 2
Our guide brought us back to the Colosseum for our Underground Tour! And because we had bought tickets already and had a guide, we waltzed past all the people waiting in lines. HA!
The outer ring around the place reminded me a lot of the college stadium back home except less vendors selling beer. You could imagine the ancient Romans walking through excited for whatever show, gladiator, hunting expeditions or ship battles (yes ship battles) were going on that day!
Although it sounds like they averaged one gladiator event a month.
The stairs leading up to various seats. Our tour didn't go there though.
We stopped here for a minute getting a history lesson and looking both ways at places we could have gone as a Roman.
Straight ahead a cross had been built by an 18th century pope to honor the fallen Christians who were believed to have been killed here.
Then we went back to the outer ring to get to the underground stairs.
Check out all the pocks and dings on the walls! Either from wars or ornaments being torn off over the last 2000 years.
Down the stairs and now in the underground, this is one of the last intact halls where the gladiators would come to get upstairs to the fight. The screen played a short video on what it may have looked like for the gladiator and any other entourage that might have accompanied him. Very well done reenactment! I may need to watch the movie Gladiator now.
Lots of information about the gladiators and the animals they fought. It wasn't just all lions and tigers, there were bears, ostriches and just a ton of other animals involved. Not all necessarily with gladiators, sometimes just each other and hunting parties. And there may have been women gladiators but not all historians believe that.
He explained what vestal virgins were and that they were highly revered. If one of them snuck away and failed to keep their vow of chastity, instead of feeding them to the lions in front of people, they walled them up into the wall with food and water and left them to die. Yikes! They thought that the vestal virgins were sacred and their blood should not be shed.
Below, some ancient prisoner had documented the happenings on a stone. How's THAT for morale?!
Way down the hall from our guide, there is a wooden elevator, invented by the Romans, to raise a wild animal to the stadium floor. At the top, it could go in any direction so that the audience and gladiator would never know which direction it would be coming from.
The wooden structure, of course, was recreated from historic information that was discovered.
Then the real underground, where all the prisoners were kept.
A lot has degraded but some of the areas are intact.
Below is the water cistern area. When the Emperor wanted a ship battle, the stadium floor was removed and the underground and basin area was filled with water from these pipes. Then they brought in scaled down versions of battle ships and the crowds were entertained by ship battles! Crazy!! It was difficult to understand during the tour but I read up on it since.
These halls were where the prison cells all branched off from.
I can't imagine how dark and dank they must have been.
He explained that the animals, like lions, would be kept in the cell on the top and the prisoner would be in the cell immediately below the lion. The lion's floor was slanted in such a way that the feces and urine of the animal would run down onto the prisoner. Yech! If they had any hope to begin with, that would crush it even more. Oh and the prisoner's cell is just short enough they couldn't stand up.
Or maybe they were all shorter back then. But I don't think so!
The people above are most likely wondering how we lucked out with a tour like this! HA!
But then we were those people later when we got to explore up there too so maybe they went on the tour earlier. Who knows?!
Then some halls leading down to more information
in little museums.
And even though I was totally prepared to translate this for everyone, it was already translated on the bottom half. Darn. My work here is done.
Then we were up in the sun again and got to explore all around the arena.
We had to get pics in front of it and it's been my profile pic on FB for a while now.
The white seats area has been rebuilt a bit and shows how people would sit for a show. I doubt they had bleacher seats to protect their backs. I would have died! Well, not IN the arena, just from the back pain.
Here is another view of that cross from the arena side.
And we thought it was great that the Colosseum is protected by this cat! It looked pretty regal sitting there like "Get OUT of my home! you common ilk!"
My gang!
Then we went to the upper levels and found another museum with a cross section of the Colosseum.
The stairs we had to climb to get there.
A miniature model of the whole thing!
And check this out! The stadium was initially built with retractable awnings to protect the viewers from rain, but even with these detailed pictures, no one has truly been able to explain how they did it.
and a final look at one of the seven wonders of the world.
I guess I can knock THAT off my list!
OOF! There's more to Rome for us, so stay tuned for part 3.
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