The Colosseum: A Painful History

hello everybody welcome back it's another episode of mega project this one we're tackling another ancient mega project because this one's all about the colosseum let's just jump before we get started though if you've got suggestions by the way for future mega projects let me know in the comments below upvote the ones you like and i might just crack on with those but for now the colosseum the roar of the crowd baying for death the smell of sweat and blood hanging in the air few buildings can ever hope to match the kind of all-encompassing experience that the colosseum must have offered a place of horrific violence where thousands lost their lives but also an engineering marvel with a design on which most modern stadiums and arenas are still based today this grand monument of the ancient world still stands majestically a visit to the coliseum today couldn't be any more different than what a visitor just under 2 000 years ago would have experienced the intense bloody combat has been replaced with intense scrummaging for photos but if you close your eyes and allow yourself to imagine the year 80 a.d you can still feel the ancient presence you can still hear the beating drums and the rattling of swords as the gladiators enter only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world still stands today the great pyramid of giza and while the colosseum was never held in such high regard it has now been included in the new seven wonders of the world along with petra the great wall of china machu picchu the taj mahal christ the redeemer and shishinitsa the largest amphitheatre ever built was constructed close to the roman forum in the italian capital rome the forum once home to a collection of government buildings is itself a wealth of historical artifacts but much of it now lies in ruin its neighbor on the other hand has survived the test of time well just about the 1940 year old cathedral of combat was constructed using travertine limestone tough volcanic rock and brick-faced concrete it was started by emperor vespasian and completed by his successor and heir titus sometimes known as the flavian amphitheatre it had a maximum capacity of between 80 and 87 000 spectators depending on which source you consult but typically averaged between 50 and 60 000 people for a performance if we take the low estimate of 80 000 only seven football stadiums across europe have ever been built with a higher capacity and this was built nearly 2 000 years ago it is a location that people continue to flock to in enormous numbers in 2018 7.5 million people visited the colosseum making it one of the most popular tourist sites anywhere in the world unlike many amphitheaters which sprung up across the roman empire the coliseum in rome lies smack bang in the middle of the city this would have been completely impossible had it not been for the great fire of rome which burned for six days and destroyed great swathes of the city in 64 a.d emperor vespasian pounced on the opportunity and the land was requisitioned for the most ambitious amphitheater the world had ever known now the money for this had to come from somewhere and in 70 a.d during the great jewish revolt the romans laid siege to jerusalem and after four months they forced their way into the city destroying much as they went when the romans returned home they did so rich in plunder an inscription in the coliseum attributed to the emperor even states that it was constructed using the victorious general's share of what was taken from jerusalem and just in case you're wondering there is no mention of how the generals felt about this donation work began on the coliseum sometime between 70 and 72 a.d by the time the emperor died in 79 a.d work had been completed up to the third story the fifth and final level was completed the following year and the coliseum hosted its inaugural events in 80 or 81 a.d again depending on the source we don't have a lot of information about these first games but there are reports that over 9 000 wild animals were killed during the inaugural games peter would have a field day the colosseum was constructed with a hundred thousand cubic meters of marble and according to sources from the time it was transported to the building site with the help of 200 bullock carts and a legion of slave labor that was said to include between twenty thousand and sixty thousand jewish slaves that's certainly not to say it was all done by slaves though with rome's finest masons iron mongers and craftsmen working on the ambitious project it's estimated that 1.1 million tons of concrete and stone went into the construction with much of it held together by 300 tons of iron clamps rather than mortar there's almost no information about the cost involved in the construction of the coliseum but experts estimate it would cost between 750 million and a billion dollars if it was built today the study used for a book the coliseum suggested that the foundations alone would cost 57 million to lay today the building received further additions with the next emperor domitian who ordered that a gallery be added at the very top of the coliseum to increase capacity even further he was also responsible for the hypogeum which is the series of tunnels and cages beneath the structure that were used to house animals and gladiators and that's something we're going to be coming back to just a little bit later in 217 a.d another fire raged in the area causing significant damage to the coliseum and destroying its upper wooden levels it would not be until 240 a.d that this pearl of the roman empire was restored to its full former glory the last mention of gladiatorial combat in the coliseum came in 435 a.d but animal hunts were recorded as late as 523 a.d but by that point rome was a really different place [Music] the fall of rome in 476 a.d was a cataclysmic event that profoundly changed europe an empire that had stood relatively unchanged for 500 years quickly disappeared the dark ages that followed were dark not only for the lack of written record but also for the bleak conditions that succeeded the roman empire the romans were by no means angelic in how they ruled but their example of education sanitation and indeed construction which has spread throughout europe quickly collapsed rome itself was sacked mercilessly but certain buildings like the coliseum and the pantheon escaped with miraculous little damage perhaps even the invaders saw what magnificent structures these were and kinda felt like leaving them alone by the sixth and seventh centuries the role of the coliseum couldn't have been more different a chapel was built within its walls and the central area section was used as a cemetery it's iconic archers and their natural alcoves became housing and workshops for the local people now in 1349 an enormous earthquake hit rome causing the outer south side of the coliseum to collapse much of the fallen stone work was removed and used in other projects around the city indeed some of the marble used in some paul's basilica in the vatican came from the coliseum in the 14th century a religious order set up residents inside and well they remained there all the way until the 19th century the colosseum is an elliptical shape 189 meters long and 156 meters wide with a base area of 24 000 square meters which is about the size of three standard football pitches the outer wall is 48 meters high about the same as a 15 story building interestingly because of earthquake damage what we see as the exterior wall today was in fact the original interior wall in fact what is visible today is significantly less than what was originally there which is just another fact that makes the coliseum even more extraordinary if we compare what we see today to its past half of the outer perimeter is completely gone and there is of course no wooden seating at the very top and much of the skeletal structure inside has been badly damaged or is just now completely missing it's not possible to walk freely around the interior of the coliseum as people once did people sometimes remark that the coliseum appears a bit smaller than they imagined maybe that has something to do with the cgi hollywood movies but the structure itself is really smaller than it once was the perimeter of the building originally measured 545 meters this was larger than it is today because half of the outer wall is missing but the basic shape is still there it's now just a bit of a crooked shape while the central arena is an oval 87 meters long and 55 meters wide the area is surrounded by a five meter high wall after which the tiered's eating begins but what we can see is not quite everything drains were built eight meters below ground level allowing for water to flow out into rome's famed sanitation network which by the way we've done a whole video about that did really well kind of a surprise hit to me on top of this strange system came the foundations made of concrete the depth of the foundations changes considerably depending on where you are in the coliseum the areas below the seating and where the outer walls once stood how foundations set 12 to 13 meters below the surface while underneath the arena area it's only four meters this is for the quite obvious reason that the outer sections had to support considerably more weight what is particularly surprising about the coliseum that you might not even think about was how efficient it was as a venue that could accommodate tens of thousands of people as i said at the start of this video the coliseum has provided a blueprint for stadium construction around the world and while method and material have obviously changed a lot much of the original design actually remains the same there were 80 entrances in and out of the coliseum 76 of which could be used by regular spectators four were reserved for the emperor his family and other dignitaries these entrances and the staircases which led up to them were all numbered to help people find their way around just as you would find in a modern arena tickets were given as a fragment of pottery with seat numbers on it which directed the spectators to their seats via a series of vomitoria which were passageways that led from the staircases it was an incredibly efficient system that allowed a quick flow in and a quick exit as well little side note here by the way if the word vomitoria sounds a little like an english word why you're exactly right the word actually comes from the latin for rapid discharge and it is from this that we take the english word vomit but let's get back to the colosseum [Music] the seating structure within the coliseum was an excellent indicator of social hierarchy special boxes to the north and the south were reserved for the emperor or the benefactor of the games as well as the vestal virgins who were the priestesses of vesta goddess of the half the hearth was a sacred flame in the city that was kept to light at all times and it was said that if it was ever to be extinguished rome would fall these were very important women either side of the boxes were senatorial seats with enough space that rome's finest could bring their own chairs there are still examples in the colosseum where individual names have been engraved into the rock i guess you can't steal somebody's seat if their name is literally scratched into the stonework the romans obviously did take all of this very seriously as we move upward in the coliseum the level in roman society decreases this section located above the senatorial seats was the manianum premium for the non-senatorial noble classes or knights this was followed by the maniam secundum which was reserved for ordinary roman citizens but was itself divided into two depending on your position the imam was the lower section for wealthy citizens while the summum above it was for the poorer citizens there are also examples of specific areas being reserved for certain social groups such as soldiers on leaves scribes priests and even boys with their tutors the maniam secundum was the final section to be added at the very top this gallery was for the common poor as well as slaves and women this section was composed either of steep wooden benches or simply standing room depending on what point of history we look at a tear was then divided by low walls into multiple sections known as mania which were then subdivided into wedges or kunai and finally promise arrow was referred to as a greatest therefore on your ticket or piece of pottery really you would have a cunes a greatest and then a specific seat number a rough format that is still used throughout the world today now although the shows were ticketed they were almost always free the events were paid for by individuals sometimes the emperor and sometimes local businessmen perhaps looking to curry favor with the demanding roman population what's more it even came with free food a wide variety of meat would have been on offer including pork venison lamb and chicken but also plenty of fruit and nuts as well as bread rolls as for drink it would have likely been some kind of watered down wine that was served as strange as it might sound with our binge drinking cultures today the romans never drank straight wine it would have always been watered down quite simply because they didn't want to get too plastered too quickly there were also plenty of prizes on offer with small wooden balls hurled into the crowd these would contain money or food but there is evidence that some even contained deeds to a house or a small apartment further when the temperature soared the crowd were treated to palsiones a water mist that had been scented with balsam or saffron there was also a giant awning known as the veiler which could be drawn across certain sections of the coliseum to provide shade other than the horrible violence that you have to watch this actually sounds really nice if only they'd just play music or something the hyper gm was a late addition to the colosseum and couldn't be seen clearly today meaning underground in latin the hypogeum is the series of tunnels and cages set over two floors underneath what was once the arena floor before contests gladiators and animals were kept below ground in these cages then brought into the arena with the aid of 80 vertical shafts this is an aspect of the coliseum which is often overlooked but it would have provided quite the spectacle with a complex pulley system and other machinery to raise or lower what was in the arena as many as 60 large revolving cylinders each two stories high and requiring four men on each level to turn known as cap stuns were used to raise all lower items people or animals between the hyper gm and the arena floor this was sometimes as straightforward as parts of sets needed for specific performances but sometimes involved large animals such as elephants and lions around the outer rim were further 28 smaller platforms which would have only been used for scenery there is evidence of an early form of hydraulic system as well as a clear layering of construction which suggests the hypergm went through four separate major phases of building work experts have described the hypergm in full swing as resembling an old-fashioned ship with ropes cables ramps hoists and counterweights used in a seamless combination and it really needed to be seamless as a small mistake in front of the emperor could mean that your day began working below in the hyper gm and ended in the gladiatorial arena [Music] now we often think of shows in the coliseum as simply bloody-minded mayhem at times it certainly was but there was also a great degree of dramatics involved which ranged from battle reenactments to hunts involving wild animals the early years of the coliseum also saw grand naval reenactments where the site was flooded to add authenticity it's not exactly clear how the colosseum would have retained the water but perhaps water from a nearby aqueduct was constantly pumped in however large-scale flooding became a thing of the past when the hyper gm was first built as this would have flooded the area below the arena floor the most popular contests were of course the gladiatorial battles these captive men and sometimes women were forced to fight to the death in front of a crowd screaming for death by the time the coliseum opened gladiator combat had evolved from freewheeling carnage into well-organized spectacles these could vary from single combat between two fighters to larger groups pitted against one another but let's bust a few myths while we're talking about gladiators firstly while most of the early gladiators were slaves this seems to have changed around the turn of the millennium graves from 1ad show that free men began to volunteer for gladiatorial combat perhaps lured by the thrill and the enticing money on offer to the winner secondly the thumbs-down gesture has always been considered a death sentence in the coliseum but historians have argued that in fact the thumbs up may have meant that the gladiator should finish off his opponent while a closed fist or even a thumbs down might have meant mercy it is something we'll probably never know for sure but it's interesting that it's the opposite of what we'd expect possibly lunch intervals often saw the most gruesome acts those who had been condemned to death were brought into the arena and either killed quickly or more often than not by condemnation of beast the act of putting somebody to death by letting a wild animal loose on them it doesn't matter how glorious the construction or how regal the coliseum appears it's difficult not to come back to what happened in the main arena it's estimated that as many as 50 000 people died within the coliseum walls many of these were people who were put to death because of religious persecution though recent evidence has suggested that the number of christians executed in the coliseum may have been much lower than the traditional narrative [Music] the first full cleaning and repair in the coliseum's history began in 2013 and was a partnership between diego delavale heads of the shoe company todd's and the local government this involved cleaning and restoring the arcaded facade and replacing the metal enclosures this process was completed in july 2016. the arena floor was also replaced in 2018 and the hyper gm was restored and opened to the public in the same year the coliseum does remain to this day one of the most astonishing buildings that humans have ever constructed it's not just because of its size or its style but because it is one of the few buildings that still breathes its ancient history it is a painful history and one that certainly shouldn't be ignored dreadful things occurred within those walls and yet it continues to fascinate visitors in the millions quite simply standing in the central arena with those towering walls around you and the ghosts of nearly 2 000 years nearby is unlike any other experience on the planet so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did you know what to do smash that like button don't forget to subscribe if you've got suggestions for future mega projects you also know what to do go down into the comments below let me know upload the ones you like and i will probably make those and as always thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 563,109

Rating: 4.9510961 out of 5

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Id: _T9ip_rsBgo

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020