Sunday 16 June 2019

The Roman Colosseum

If you want to find out all about my recent travels to Rome you can read all about it here. I had such a fantastic time, and Rome is definitely a must visit place. One of the must visit attractions is the Colosseum and I thought I would dedicate a post to it.



Before the trip my family and I had done some research into whether we needed to pre-book to go to the Colosseum or not. My friend had not long been herself and said there is ample of opportunities to buy tickets on the day. She was not joking, when you arrive there are hundreds of people selling tickets but I am always a bit unsure about whether they are all official or just a scam. We had bought a 48 hour hop on hop off bus ticket, and with the same company you were able to buy off them tickets for the Colosseum. We pre-booked a slot of 2pm to go the next day. The tickets were around 30 euros each, which I think is the standard price from wherever you decide to buy your tickets from. 



If possible I would definitely try and pre-book tickets, or if that is not viable then I would recommend at least booking a time slot. We went in April and the queue was pretty big. If you have a slot booked you will stay have to queue. We queued for about 40 minutes, but the other queue was easily 2 hours as it snaked all around the outside of the Colosseum. We found it all a little bit unorganised as there was three separate queues and there was only one person who worked there trying to organise hundreds of people. Once in the correct queue, there was a tight security process which I am always happy to see. You can pay for a guided tour with a tour guide, an audio tour or you can just stroll round at your leisure. We opted for the audio tour which I would recommend. There wasn't much to read inside to find out about its history, whereas the audio tour was split up into sections and you go can round slowly at your pace and listen to the relevant information at each point. For the extra few pounds it definitely brought the place to life.


It was really interesting to find out in much more depth about the Colosseum and its use. It used to hold 50,000+ people at one time. Its main use was for gladiator contests and public spectacles. We have all heard of gladiators but it really brought to life seeing exactly how it was viewed. It's quite barbaric to find out that they use to let prisoners have second chances by competing in the tournaments in order to have freedom known as people vs beast games. It used to be the main source of entertainment and tourists would travel from far and wide to come to events. You are able to see the underground area which is called the hypogeum which is thought to have been where they held the gladiators, prisoners and animals.

Despite it being so grand and such a big piece of history for Rome it was not actually in use for its purpose for that long. It unfortunately became damaged quite significantly from an earthquake in 1349 and has been restored to be a tourist attraction over the years. In 2018 it was actually the most visited tourist attraction in the world with over 7 million tourists visiting it.

As well as the Colosseum you can visit to more sites called Palatine Hill and The Roman Forum. The Forum houses ruins showing different eras from the city of Rome. Palatine Hill is one of the oldest parts of ancient Rome left and was once the home of many emperors.


Overall, we are all had a fantastic day at the Colosseum and if you visit Rome no matter if you are into history or not you have to go. Rome has to keep so much of its history alive and this is a perfect example of how they have done this.

Lucy
xoxo


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