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12.4 The Colosseum as a Post-Antique Quarry
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Из курса от партнера Yale University
Roman Architecture
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The Creation of an Icon: The Colosseum and Contemporary Architecture in Rome
The Flavian dynasty of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. Vespasian linked himself to Divus Claudius by completing the Claudianum, distanced himself from Nero by destroying part of the Domus Aurea, filling in the artificial lake and replacing it with the Colosseum. Titus commissioned Rome's first preserved example of the "imperial bath type," characterized by grand scale, axiality, and symmetry.
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Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
The interior is a different story entirely.
It is not as well preserved as the exterior.
It is fascinating however to see.
And I think you can tell from this particular view of the interior,
where we have so, as always, we have so many tourists inside the Colosseum.
I think you, they, they are very useful because they give you
a very good sense of scale, of how truly enormous this building is.
They also show you that much of what was once
there is no longer there, in the interior of the structure.
As we look down on it, we can see the elliptical shape of the arena.
We can see the substructures here, all made of concrete.
The ones that are below the arena itself were used for the storage of crops
but also for the housing of the animals that were brought up for animal combat.
There were small, there were small and larger cages down here and
I'm going to show you what those looked like in a moment.
So that's the location of those but again, not in very good condition today.
Even more striking is the fact that although you can see again the the
concrete substructures for the seats on which the cavea rested.
If you look very carefully, you will see there
is only a single cuneus that is still
preserved with a small number of marble marble seats.
The whole thing was sheathed in marble in antiquity.
All of the seats would have been marble only that small section is
preserved, and I can show you another view where we see the same.
Here, we're looking at that one cuneus over here with that one set of marble.
Seats, the only marble seats that are still preserved
in the Colosseum today.
Why is that, you ask yourselves and you might ask me.
The reason for that is that the Colusseum was used as a
marble quarry for some, for a very, for, for practically from the time,
you know, not, not too long after it was built, but certainly
in the post-antique period it was used very significantly as a marble quarry.
By whom? By the great
princes and even by the popes, the popes did not hesitate to plunge the Colosseum
for the marble that they needed for the
buildings that they were putting up around Rome.
The Colosseum ended up in some extraordinary
buildings, so it was not for naught.
But at the same time, obviously it, it changed the
face of the interior of the, of the Colosseum forever.
As we can see so well here.
Two models, of what the substructures would have looked like
in the area of the Colosseum where the animals were kept.
And they had a system of ramps and pulleys that would, and they, they
took the animals up, either up the ramps or by pulley from these cages.
As you can see they had metal grills in front of them.
Animals, diverse animals, kept down
here below and then brought up when needed through openings
in the in the flo, the pavement of the arena.
The arena would have been paved with concrete.
We have other examples of that elsewhere, I am going to show you one today and there
would have been holes in that by which you could bring the animals up to the arena.
This is a restored view of what the Colosseum would have, the interior
of the Colosseum would have looked like in antiquity when a
performance was when a, when a gladiatorial performance was taking place.
We see that what they did was they covered over
the arena with some kind of ancient version of astroturf.
They planted, they put trees, that they probably,
I don't know, real or fake trees, not
sure which props that were that took the shape of mountains as you can see here and
then the gladiatorial com, the animal
combat would take place against that backdrop.
You can also see the street, the seats, the cavea, the wedge shaped sections of
those seats, the cunae the 50,000 people packed in for this special event.
And then, at the uppermost part, you see the
awning, or this particular artist's rendition of the awning.
I think is very amusing that the artist has rendered it like an oculus,
which is pretty unlikely that it looked quite like that.
But I guess it's a very Roman thing to do, so he did that.
But it looks, it looked probably in antiquity
a, quite a bit more like the awning
that we saw in the painting in Pompeii
that represented a characteristic awning for a Roman amphitheater.
The Colosseum, extremely famous in its own day, continued
to be famous in antiquity I show you here a
coin, the reverse of a coin of a boy emperor by the name of Gordian the Third.
You see Gordian up there.
The reverse of this coin in the third,
in the eaerly third century A.D. showing the Colosseum.
So we certainly know from that that it was still
in good condition and being used in the third century.
We see the outside with its tiers of columns.
We see something an event going on inside, we
see people in the seats and we see those
holes that supported the awning here.
And most interestingly we see the Colossus which was
clearly still standing also in the third century A.D. The
Colossus in which the features have been changed from those
of Nero to those of Saul with the rayed crown.
It was very easy to do that because as I had mentioned
Nero had been shown originally himself as Saul with the rayed crown.
So all they had to do was change the
features of the face.
They could leave the crown, and that crown clearly
still still there in the third century A.D. But
just again as a reminder that the Colosseum gets
its name from that colossal statue that stood next door.
And this one last view of the Colosseum.
This is a model which you have on your monument list.
A model that probably gives you as good an idea as any of what the exterior
of the building looked like in antiquity. And I use it here to show you two things.
One, that we do believe, on the second and third stories
there were statues, statues placed in the niches beneath the arches.
And this also shows you very well the way in which the wooden poles rested on the
brackets, those wooden poles to serve to support the awning of the structure.
Anything and everything goes on at the Colosseum.
When I started going to the Colosseum, more
years ago than I want to say, the Colosseum
was very easy to get into, popped over there and you could walk in, in a flash.
Never a problem.
It's become one of the greatest tourist sights in Rome.
and, in, in fact a warning if you're going to be making your way.
I, I, at least one of you mentioned to me, spring break trip.
If you're going to be making your way to the Colosseum any
time soon or in the future, it's actually not a bad idea to go online.
You can now go online and you can
get tickets online, for places like the Colosseum.
You don't need it for most places, but for the Vatican, the Colosseum.
The most popular.
It's not a bad idea to get tickets in advance because then you can go on the
short line instead of the line that you're going to have to wait for hours to get in.
But while you're outside, there's always something going on.
This also never used to happen, but recently
the the Romans have gotten smart about [LAUGH] about realizing that, that,
that everyone wants a photo op, and so they supply a host of gladiators outside.
The entrance way.
And especially since everyone is online for so many
hours you might as well have something to do.
So they, they stock stock the place with, with modern gladiators, who are
more than willing, for a certain number of Euros to pose in your pictures.
And you see a young
woman here taking her boyfriend or husband what, whomever a picture of
him to playing the gladiatorial role with this sword as you can see.
And there's, lots of fun, its fun just to, to
stand there and watch, everybody posing for this extraordinary pictures.
We saw that in the Colosseum the substructures were very poorly preserved.
And so I wanted to show you another amphitheater where they
are well preserved, so you can get a better sense
of what those substructures would have looked like in antiquity.
And so I take us back to, back south.
We go down south to Campania, once again, to a place called Pozzuoli.
And Pozzuoli is very near to Baia and near to Naples, and near to Pompeii and
Hurculaneum and so on A town that has one of the best preserved Roman amphitheaters
in the, from the ancient Roman world. It dates to the late first century
A.D. And I show you a view here of the substructures of the amphitheater,
the Roman amphitheater at Pozzuoli, and you can see what I mean.
The annular vaulted carders down below, well preserved as are
the the cages in which the animals were kept, in antiquity.
The, the gates, the grates are gone, but the the cages are still there as is much
of the ceiling and it's actually a fun place
to wander through because the light effects are incredible.
The light effects through the, the openings
in that ceiling that were the openings through
which the animals were were transported by ramp or by pulley up to the arena.
Here's another view where you can also get a great sense
of these substructures, of the places where the animals were kept and also
of those openings in the ceiling that allowed them to be brought up above.
And you can also notice very well here the fact that the
construction in this case, late first
century A.D., is concrete faced with brick.
Faced with brick.
And we talked about another important part of Nero's architectural revolution.
Was the fact that they began to build
buildings that were a brick faced concrete buildings.
We talked about the fact that that had to
do with the fire, and the decision taken that
brick was more fireproof than stone and they began
to use it, and we see it being used here.
So, another important architectural revolution another important facet of
Nero's architectural revolution, that was not lost with the emperor's death.
And here, you can see the very
well-preserved pavement of the arena done in concrete with these openings in it, the
same openings that you saw just before
from down below, from which the light came.
These are the openings through which props, animals, some of them
are very small, some of them are larger, would allow indivi
some things to be brought up through them, but you can
also see there was a big, open area in the center.
That was also used,
covered over when there was an event, but that was also there in order to allow a
freer flow and, and allow the attendants to bring the animals up to the top.
So again a very well-preserved pavement of the arena.
And you can also see in this view that the
seats, the cavea of the theater at Pozzuoli, also extremely well-preserved.
You can't tell here but the division
into cunae, the same.
So we look to this amphitheater to give us a better sense of
what the interior of the Colosseum would have looked like in ancient Roman times.
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