The Roman Colosseum is huge! I knew it was big but never thought that it is THAT big, it’s taller than most of the modern stadiums nowadays.
The inside of Colosseum, the fighting ground that we saw at Gladiator movie was actually a wood platform covered with sand, beneath it was chambers and trap doors, allowing gladiators or beast to come out of somewhere beneath, creating the suprise element.
Too bad the ancient Romans didn’t have the mindset to preserve the great structure, things like marble, steel, and woods were taken and used for construction or war.
Another equally impressive but very well preserved architecture is the Pantheon. It was built at around 200BC and still standing after 2000 years.
Set aside the history, the structure itself was amazing. I couldn’t imagine how they built the structure, with the huge hemisphere on top of it, without any pillar at the middle of the building. Funny thing is the top of the hemisphere roof is a hole, yupe a hole on purpose, don’t ask me what that’s for.
Just to show how huge the Pantheon is..
btw the famous Raphael was buried here.
(edited 29/11/2005)
December 1st, 2005 at 10:50 pm
[...] The highlight was the famous Colosseum, it looked really huge and gigantic. We also visited the Pantheon before heading back to the hotel and ready for dinner. [...]