Colosseum

The largest amphitheatre the Roman world ever built, the Colosseum (Colosseo on local signs) once held crowds of tens of thousands for gladiatorial combats, animal hunts and public spectacles. Begun under the emperor Vespasian and inaugurated by his son Titus in AD 80, it was known in antiquity as the Flavian Amphitheatre, after the dynasty that built it.

The monument itself is the main attraction. Visitors walk the tiered seating corridors and look down into the arena, where the remains of the hypogeum, the underground network of passages and chambers that held animals, fighters and stage machinery, lie exposed. The outer wall of travertine still stands to its full height on one side, while the stripped sections elsewhere show centuries of earthquakes and reuse of the stone as a quarry.

Drawing more than seven million visitors a year, the Colosseum forms part of an archaeological park with the neighbouring Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, and many visitors see all three together.