Rome. Part One. Colosseum and Forum

I took my first solo trip in 2013. I remember walking out of the airport into hot summer Rome. I had no plan, no map with marked spots, and not the slightest idea why I had come. I wandered aimlessly around the city under the scorching sun and was too shy to go into a restaurant for a proper meal.

After three days in Rome, I took home two hundred photos of manhole covers, curbs, road signs, and trash cans. Among them was exactly one photo of the Colosseum, which I stumbled upon by accident while walking around the city. I even managed to tie all that junk together into a short story.

It took me quite a while to realize that Artemy Lebedev (a Russian designer and blogger) is a bad role model. As for Rome, I offer it my deepest apologies and pick up where I left off last time.

The Colosseum

One day, the Roman emperor Nero wanted to “live like a decent human being” and decided to build himself the largest palace in the world.

The emperor’s plans were hindered by the houses and temples occupying the center of Rome — the most suitable place for a palace. Of course, Nero could have just demolished the wretched hovels, but the temples were trickier.

The famous Great Fire of Rome came to the emperor’s rescue, burning down almost the entire city, including the spot where Nero planned to build his palace. Having learned about the fire from the morning news and being greatly surprised by the coincidence, the ancient Romans remembered the ancient Roman principle of cui bono — look for who benefits. And they accused Nero himself of arson.

Nero remembered this principle too and blamed the fire on the damned Christians, who at the time were about as much of a bogeyman in Rome as Jehovah’s Witnesses are in Russia today. And on the ashes he did build his palace, with a golden dome and a 36-meter statue of himself; next to it he dug a lake — apparently in case of another fire.

Stunned by such insolence, the Democratic Party Roman Senate impeached Nero and declared him an enemy of the people. The final blow for the emperor was the news that a CD-burning program had been named after him. When he learned of this, Nero killed himself by cutting his own throat.

So what does the Colosseum have to do with all this, the reader may ask? Well, the Colosseum has everything to do with it, because it was built right on top of the very lake Nero had dug for his palace. And the whole Colosseum project was a pure example of ancient Roman propaganda!

After the fire, a financial crisis hit Rome. To build his golden palace — and, with the change, to rebuild the city — Nero raised taxes sharply. The patience of the Romans, first burned out and now robbed, finally snapped, and uprisings broke out across the country. It was one of the worst periods in the history of the Roman Empire.

Nero’s suicide stirred Rome up even more. The Senate frantically searched for a way out and changed emperors like gloves. After trying four old men in the role of the new general secretary, the senators decided that only a candidate of the people could fix the situation. And they chose Vespasian as emperor — a talented general who had won the people’s love by crushing a Jewish protest in Israel.

Vespasian faced two tasks. First, he urgently had to keep the rebellious people busy with something. Second, he had to restore the battered authority of the Roman Empire after the reign of that madman Nero. But how do you do that when the country is in such a crisis that there isn’t even enough money to pave golden paths at the senators’ dachas?

Vespasian thought long and hard. And at last he came up with a great idea for how to sit on two chairs at once. He decided to tear down Nero’s palaces, fill in his lake, and build in their place... a huge stadium.

“And the Jews will pay for everything,” Vespasian added as an afterthought, and robbed Israel once more, carrying off the rest of its treasures. Including the huge golden menorah, which you can still see on the arch leading into the Roman Forum.

Vespasian’s calculation went like this.

Worn out by taxes and fires, the Roman public demanded “bread and circuses.” A big construction project easily took care of the first demand. They say a quarter of Rome’s population was involved in building the Colosseum. Everyone had work: from architects to sellers of business lunches. And the pay was good — certainly enough for bread.

The idea of a big construction project proved so successful that two thousand years later, during the Great Depression, the economist Keynes would propose it as a way to fight unemployment. According to him, to get out of a crisis, the state should place a large and pointless order, giving work to the unhappy proletariat. What a clever economist he was, discovering so much that was new!

Still, the Colosseum wasn’t pointless. Besides bread, it also gave the public circuses. What could be better for calming riots than a free ticket to the gladiator games? The Colosseum was open to everyone. Every citizen of Rome could come to the thing he had spent 10 years building and enjoy a spectacular show. And the Colosseum could hold 50,000 people.

Vespasian’s PR campaign was a huge success. Tired of the endless turmoil, the Romans watched the gladiator fights and dreamily imagined gouging out the eyes of that damned Nero with their own hands.

Today, the Colosseum stands in the center of Rome as if it were nothing special. On one of the streets, just past an ordinary crosswalk, a giant stadium built two thousand years ago suddenly appears.

On the other side of the Colosseum there’s what you might call a vacant lot with the boring Arch of Titus, and then the Roman Forum begins. Above it rises the Palatine Hill, which offers the best view of the ancient Roman stadium.

But first you have to climb the hill. While we’re still on the ground, the observer should know that the Colosseum is made up of an endless number of arches of all shapes and sizes. They weren’t invented for beauty. If the walls had been built without arches, they would have been too heavy, and the whole structure would have collapsed under its own weight.

In the original design, the Colosseum had 3 levels, each made up of 80 arches. Inside, the Colosseum was designed like a layer cake: the walls supporting the stadium seats are also made of arches.

Inside, the Colosseum is even more interesting than outside. You can see the remains of the rows of worn marble seats. The front rows, closest to the arena, are the best preserved. Seats were assigned by social status: aristocrats sat in front, and simpler folk in the back.

After Vespasian’s death, a fourth level was added to the Colosseum. That’s where the plebeians, the homeless, and the slaves (all different people) gathered, let out for a day to watch the gladiator fights.

In the middle of the Colosseum was the arena, where the fights took place.

Interestingly, the word “arena” comes from the Latin harena, which meant “sand.” So literally, an arena is a place covered with sand. Today little remains of the arena — just one section rebuilt for tourists.

But that’s actually good, because the most interesting part was under the arena. That’s where the real backstage of the Colosseum was. There was a row of dressing rooms for the gladiators, where they could powder their noses before a deadly battle. And there were cages with wild animals. This place was called the hypogeum.

The main feature of gladiator fights was that at any moment, anywhere in the arena, a lion, say, could suddenly spawn. And the gladiator had to fight the lion.

To make a lion suddenly appear at a random spot in the arena, the Romans came up with a clever system. They made 60 trapdoors in the new wooden arena and built an elevator under each. The animal was driven onto the platform, and the elevator lifted it up into the arena.

The English word “beast” comes from the Latin bestia, which meant any wild animal. In Rome, gladiators who fought animals were called bestiarii.

What beasts didn’t the bestiarii fight! The Colosseum saw lions, tigers, elephants, rhinos, crocodiles, and even ostriches. Imagine the gladiator’s face when he turns around and finds that someone has quietly tossed a hippo into the arena.

Need I say that the Colosseum was a cutting-edge project?

The Romans used concrete and red brick — light materials that didn’t overload the structure but kept it strong.

The highlight of the Colosseum was its sunshades. In hot weather, huge sheets of fabric were stretched over the stadium, with ropes running to a central ring so that they balanced each other.

They say the awnings were operated by a whole team of specially hired sailors. Nothing remains of them today, and the details of the design are still not fully known.

The Roman Forum

Behind the Colosseum lies the Roman Forum. It was the main square of ancient Rome, and now it lies in ruins.

On maps of Ancient Rome you can find many names starting with the word via.

This Latin word meant path, road, and street. The reader surely knows it from English. For example, “fly via Moscow” means to fly through Moscow. Streets also run through a city.

The Roman Forum begins with a pompous arch — the very one on whose wall the golden menorah taken from Jerusalem is depicted. Behind the arch begins the main street of Ancient Rome, the Via Sacra. If the Romans had spoken English, they would have put it more simply: Sacred Street.

When a Roman emperor returned with a great victory, say in a war, he rode through the streets of Rome in a gilded chariot drawn by white horses, surrounded by senators and an orchestra.

The victory procession went along the Sacred Street and stopped at the Temple of Jupiter. Here a sacred offering was made to this god — the chief god of the whole Roman Empire. Hence the name of the street.

If a general returned with a minor victory, say over pirates, the procession did without chariots and horses. After walking along the Sacred Street, the general quietly and routinely made an offering to Jupiter, and that was the end of it.

The reader knows the names of both these ceremonies very well. The great procession with the chariot was called a triumph, and the small one an ovation. Some may also have heard the phrase memento mori, which means “remember that you will die.” These words were repeated in the triumphant general’s ear during the procession so that he wouldn’t imagine himself a god. How we lack that in modern politics!

Nothing remains of the Temple of Jupiter, where the offerings were made, but the walls of a similar Temple of Saturn have survived nearby.

Interestingly, the buildings of ancient Rome that survived best are the ones converted into churches. For example, one of the temples looks completely intact:

But look closer, and it turns out that only a skeleton of columns remains. Its insides were scraped out long ago, and a Christian church was built inside the bones.

All kinds of arches have survived perfectly well — they are simple and sturdy structures. The other buildings of Rome rotted away throughout the Middle Ages; they were taken apart for spare parts and converted into shops.

For example, a barbershop once operated in one of the most luxurious arches of the Roman Forum. The owner set up a bedroom in the upper part of the arch and cut a window in the wall to keep an eye out for thieves. This window gapes like a black hole right in the middle of a solemn inscription.

Despite all the efforts of medieval barbers, Rome has outlived them all. From a good angle, it doesn’t even look like ruins.

Augmented reality tours have become fashionable in Rome, but they’re a waste of money. When you walk through the Roman Forum, your brain fills in the remains of the foundations and the fragments of columns by itself. Vanished streets and houses wiped off the face of the earth draw themselves before your eyes.

In the Roman Forum there’s something to see not only above ground but also below it. Rome wasn’t the first to invent sewers. But Rome was the first to build such an impressive sewer network that it still works today, 2,500 years later. True, it now carries rainwater rather than sewage.

The Roman sewer system served more than a million residents. It was an unthinkably complex project for its time. Humanity had never seen anything like it. Kilometers of channels were dug under the city to carry away waste water. Toilets in ordinary people’s homes were rare, but Rome had a network of public toilets near markets, theaters, and forums.

Carrying waste water away from every corner of Rome, dozens of small channels branched and merged into larger ones, and then the sewage came together in a single ecstasy, flowing into the main sewer of Ancient Rome. It was called the Cloaca Maxima — from the Latin cloaca, “sewer.”

You can see the remains of the Cloaca Maxima. They stick out of a cross-section of a foundation in the Roman Forum.

But even more interesting than the underground is looking at Rome from a good height. And right next to the Forum there is just such a height!

From the local hill, which adjoins the Forum, the outlines of houses and streets are visible without any hints or diagrams.

From here, you understand why Rome is the Eternal City.

And from here, at last, you can see the great Colosseum.

So what is this height? It’s the Palatine Hill I promised, at the foot of which lies the Roman Forum.

The Palatine Hill

Dozens of cities around the world are supposedly built on seven hills, but only Rome can list all of its hills by name.

The Palatine was the central and most important hill of Rome. It was home to the palaces of emperors and aristocrats. The Palatine is the most famous hill in the world, because it has written itself into dozens of languages.

The thing is, the English word “palace” itself comes from the name of this palace hill. Russian also bears its trace: the old word palaty, “chambers,” comes from it too.

Today the hill is covered with beautiful gardens that grew over the Palatine during a millennium and a half of oblivion. These trees, which have become an unofficial symbol of Rome, are just one species of Italian pine. They can’t be more than 500 years old.

Next to the pines, ancient arches grow on the Palatine. They’re a little older: 2,000 years.

One of the largest buildings on the hill is the Domus Augustana. It was built in 92. It’s just part of the huge Palace of Domitian, which sits right in the center of the Palatine Hill.

Not all the ruins were once palaces. Nearby are ruins resembling an ancient stadium. In fact, there was an imperial garden and a hippodrome here.

However, this hippodrome is a mere dwarf compared to the Circus Maximus, the main hippodrome of Ancient Rome.

Of course, that’s just a name. The Circus Maximus was no circus. The word “circus” itself comes from the Latin circus, which simply meant “circle.” The Romans used this word for any stadium, hippodrome, and, presumably, very fat people.

The Circus Maximus is no longer the Palatine Hill. It lies at the foot of the hill, on the side opposite the Roman Forum. But it was from the palaces on the Palatine that the best view of this hippodrome opened up — a view now blocked by trees.

The scale of the Circus Maximus is best appreciated from the ground. Only half the stadium fits in the frame, and its far end is barely visible. Chariot races were held here from 500 BC. Under Julius Caesar, the hippodrome seated 150,000 spectators. Even the luxurious Meydan Racecourse in Dubai holds only 60,000.

The remains of the Circus Maximus aren’t very interesting. It’s just a field with the outlines of ancient walls. Italians often have picnics here.

But from this field you get a great view of the ruins of the Palatine palaces. It was from these immense imperial chambers that the Roman emperors watched the races.

And what did the athletes, spectators, and onlookers at the stadium look at? They could hardly make out anything but a silhouette that looked like Emperor Augustus. So they watched the races and never imagined that one day anyone could get into the imperial palace for 20 euros.