Italy Will Rebuild Colosseum’s Floor

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/italy-plans-install-floors-colosseum-1-180976635/

by pseudolus • 6 years ago

164 176 6 years ago

rasengan• 6 years ago

I’m looking at pictures of the venue and wondering how it will only cost 10m to restore the floor? Secondly, if it’s so cheap relatively, why wasn’t it done earlier?

mhb• 6 years ago

That's not what it will cost. It's not even designed yet. That's what the Italian government has pledged towards it.

dmurray• 6 years ago

Even if it's free (€10m does sound too cheap) it's always a tough question for conservators: is it better to restore an ancient building or artwork to what we think it used to look like, or to preserve it so that everything you see is authentic?

There are arguments on both sides. We don't generally repaint Ancient Greek marble statues, for example.

mam23• 6 years ago

Since i'm a kid i've never understood what good there was to keep ruins, as opposed to rebuilding "in the spirit of". In the end that's what do a lot of movies and video games and it's a better experience than visting ruins.

This may sound childish but I'm dead serious.

cambalache• 6 years ago

Are they pre-selling tickets for the first show?

irrational• 6 years ago

Will they be giving out free bread to attendees at Colosseum shows?

StavrosK• 6 years ago

No, just circus tickets.

jxramos• 6 years ago

that both celebrated and embodied the grandeur of Rome.

So what exactly put an end to these inhumane shows? Did the arena become destroyed in a fire or was sacked and plundered, or did the populace lose its taste for gore and grow a conscience or something in that direction? Or was it that these shows went on for the full life of the Roman Empire and yet no following generation and municipality picked it up again and or didn't know how to operate the thing when the empire fell.

rendall6• 6 years ago

Christianity, essentially

cblconfederate• 6 years ago

St. Ignatius, the first Christian who died in the Colosseum, chose to die for his religion in front of tens of thousands of people rather than escape persecution or die in a less public place. About 3000 Christian martyrs in all died in the Colosseum.

ghaff• 6 years ago

per Wikipedia: Honorius issued a decree during his reign, prohibiting men from wearing trousers in Rome. The last known gladiatoral games took place during the reign of Honorius, who banned the practice in 399 and again in 404, reportedly due to the martyrdom of a Christian monk named Telemachus while he was protesting a gladiator fight.

(Which was pretty much at the end of the Roman Empire and the city was sacked a few years later.)

bboreham• 6 years ago

There was no “following municipality” for about 1000 years. Not one rich enough to fund that size of show.

jcranmer• 6 years ago

Practically speaking, after the deposition of the last Western Emperor, Italy was still nominally part of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine Empire did actually reconquer most of Italy from the Ostrogoths, but they didn't hold onto it for long, and much was reconquered by the Lombards, except for the Exarchate of Ravenna.

The collapse of Byzantine rule in Italy led the pope to ask the Carolingians for protection from the Lombards, and the pope got control of (most of) the ex-Exarchate of Ravenna in return, renamed the Papal States. The Republic of Venice gained independence from the Byzantine Empire at roughly the same time, and grew into one of the most dominant powers of the Middle Ages, eventually managing to conquer the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth Crusade. Other parts of Northern Italy also developed large, powerful merchant republic city-states throughout the Middle Ages: Amalfi, Genoa, Pisa, Ancona, Gaeta, Ragusa (although that was actually on what is now Croatian coastline).

I will point out that, throughout the Middle Ages, the largest, richest, and most powerful cities in Western Europe would have been these Italian city-states. They absolutely would have been able to fund that size of show--after all, these are the cities that patronized the arts and eventually the Italian Renaissance.

coldtea7• 6 years ago

Well, the Eastern empire (where the capital was moved to) did well for those other 1000 years.

frostburg• 6 years ago

The visible damage to the structure is mostly due to the building materials having been reused in other structures in the following centuries.

retrac5• 6 years ago

In the received history, Emperor Honorius banned them in 399 AD. Rome would be sacked by barbarians a decade later and never recovered.

Some games would continue after that into the 5th century, anyway. Still, it was on the way out before the Empire fell in the West. The origins of gladiatorial combat are disputed, but it's tied to the military and religious rites of the Roman people specifically, and long predated the imperial era. It probably ties back into the human sacrifice themes common to the Indo-European religions. It was a practice alien to most of the peoples in the empire, and was used as a means of asserting imperial authority.

In the 3rd/4th century, we have the empire under strain economically which gives real-world pressure to curtail the games. Demographics are shifting and there are a lot of culturally non-Roman citizens in the empire, including emperors. At the same time, Christianity was on the rise. It erased the ancient religious justifications, and created new religious objections. Once Christianity becomes cemented as the state religion it was pretty much done -- Christian martyrs being thrown to the lions in the Colosseum was an old meme even then.

MereInterest• 6 years ago

What does "received history" mean in this context? A quick google search found use of the phrase when discussing history, but I didn't find any definitions.

TheCoelacanth• 6 years ago

With the fall of the western empire, Rome's population collapsed from over a million to only tens of thousands. It wouldn't cross 100,000 again until the 18th century. It just didn't have the wealth or population necessary to hold such shows.

monkeybutton• 6 years ago

I can't imagine what it would be like living in a city that was once so large and then so sparsely populated. Like a medieval apocalypse. Was the remaining population densely located in few spots amongst ruins?

Kelamir• 6 years ago

So what exactly put an end to these inhumane shows?

You might want to check out the Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin, episode "Painfotainment". It has some ideas as to why that happened.

baron816• 6 years ago

“The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theater,” Russo adds, “but no gladiator shows.”

That’s a shame. Simulated gladiator shows would be a HUGE draw.

Right now, the Colosseum isn’t much to look at, just a bunch of rubble. But imagine if they had actors recreate some of the battles they had there. Maybe throw in some holographic lions. Every young boy around the world would be demanding to visit Rome.

I would argue the recreated Globe Theater in London is a better tourist attraction than the Colosseum, on account of it being a more immersive experience.

saberdancer• 6 years ago

I have to ask what is impressive to you if you call Colosseum "just a bunch of rubble".

ThalesX4• 6 years ago

I was recently thinking about this as they built a state of the art office building nearby.

It has around 15 floors, looks amazing, it appears well built based on what I could tell.

It’s going to house hundreds if not thousands of humans, will be perfectly equipped to handle climatization, waste disposal, cleanliness. This is an amazing feat, and one that I personally did not really give proper thought.

Basically what I’m arguing is that any modern office building is so much more impressive than the colliseum was, maybe even at inception. More specifically, to answer your question directed at OP, I’m hard pressed not to find anything modern that’s less impressive than the Colosseum.

I’m interested in what you find so special about the bunch of rubble that warrants lack of intervention?

Edit: really I had no idea this would bring me to negative points. Would love someone explaining what I’m missing in these downvotes.

Fargren• 6 years ago

Not the OP. I found the Palatino ruins to be extremely impressive, and the Colosseum to be a "just a bunch of rubble". It's just not a good looking building, and the areas that are open don't let you see anything that I found particularly interesting. It's big, and well built, and it's interesting how similar it is to a modern day stadium. But it's just a stadium. Vising the Forum and the temples on the other hand has fascinating, and made think about how life in antiquity would have been.

koolba• 6 years ago

That’s a shame. Simulated gladiator shows would be a HUGE draw.

And real ones would be a HUGER draw!

I bet UFC would pay them top dollar to rent it out for a night.

lou13065• 6 years ago

On a similar note, during the 1960 Olympics in Rome, wrestling competitions were held at Massentium's Basilica [1]. If Rome ever gets to host another edition of the Olympic Games, the Colosseum would make for an incredible setting.

[1] https://www.rerumromanarum.com/2016/08/olimpiadi-di-roma-196... (in Italian, but it has pictures)

rantwasp• 6 years ago

oh wow. really?

as someone who has actually visited the Colosseum I can tell you that it’s so much more than a “bunch of rubble”.

ThalesX4• 6 years ago

I feel like people have been missing your idea due to the ‘rubble’ statement, which for some reason everyone is taking literally.

I agree with you. I happen to live in a country with castles here and there, and I would love for a more interactive experience when I go there.

Also, having visited Rome and the Colloseum multiple times, I’m always more impressed at other buildings or some hidden corner than by this particular attraction.

The Colloseum, reworked in its original spirit and form, used as an entertainment arena, would be heaps more entertaining than it is now.

echan00• 6 years ago

I love the history. But sometimes it really feels like that's what Italy is all about: let's spend money on the past for more tourist money.

mynegation• 6 years ago

I love technology. But sometimes it really feels like that’s what Google is all about: let’s spend money on search for more advertisers’ money.

Obviously it works for Italy and huge number of people so why not?

thefz• 6 years ago

Italy instead should promote even more of its cultural heritage like France does, as an example, and not less. It is really the most valued richness of our country. Investing in valorising the past does not mean crystallizing on it, it means learning from its lessons.

bamboleo4• 6 years ago

Wait till you hear about Egypt.

Prices in Italy are balanced and not even that bad. The ticket to the colosseum is 16€ and includes the entire park nearby. 16€ for the main attraction in one of the most visited countries in the world is pretty reasonable.

thih9• 6 years ago

Wait till you hear about Egypt.

What about Egypt? Could you elaborate?

npsomaratna2• 6 years ago

I can remember visiting Egypt (many years ago) and being frustrated about how expensive the fees were for foreign tourists. Being from a third world country, and not having much personal wealth at that time, I was forced to skip the Tutankhamun exhibit in the Cairo museum—something that I regret even today.

Note: I was in Cairo as part of an official delegation (i.e., my country paid for my travel, and the sponsor organization in Egypt paid for my bed + board). At that time, I couldn't have afforded either.

hutzlibu4• 6 years ago

Have you been to italy?

Because even though tourism is important, I never had this impression.

greatpatton2• 6 years ago

It is also funny to note that many other roman arena and theater are still used today for shows. From concert to bull fighting.

bamboleo4• 6 years ago

One must note * across Europe. No bullfighting in Italy.

greatpatton2• 6 years ago

And in Switzerland this is Swiss Cow fighting (combat de Reines)

hertzrat5• 6 years ago

I didn’t realize that bull fighting happened in Italy, I thought it was an unfortunate Spanish thing

orange_tee• 6 years ago

I think he means Roman era amphitheatres in Spain.

lou13065• 6 years ago

Tauromachy (bullfighting) is a very ancient ritual: the spanish one is just one of its most recent formalisation. Venationes (hunting games) were common practice in Rome. The picture of gladiators fighting lions in the Colosseum is iconic, but bulls were also used.

Thorrez3• 6 years ago

In high school my track team once ran around the Circus Maximus for practice.

rendall6• 6 years ago

Was it an Italian high-school?

duxup• 6 years ago

I attended a concert at one in Orange:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Theatre_of_Orange

I wondered if emperor Augustus could imagine his statue would overlook such an event centuries later.

hertzrat5• 6 years ago

The show “Alive” makes me think of colosseums sometimes. It is a reality show about surviving in the wild, except that they drop you in at the start of the fall where there is no food and the end of every season is a starvation and suffering fest. The most recent season there are mostly poor people, one formerly homeless, who are all so desperate for the money that they take medical or wildlife-related risks on a regular basis. In one season, a poor dad is hiding frost bitten toes so a he can try to win money for his kid etc. In several seasons somebody has requested emergency extraction because of cold or animals or other things and it took 6–12 hours to get help - imagine if it was really urgent. I used to really enjoy the show but reality tv is pushing the envelope here a bit too much. They aren’t slaves and are doing this by choice, but like I said, some are desperately poor

etrautmann• 6 years ago

Do you mean the show “Alone”?

I have conflicted feelings about it if we’re discussing the same show. On one hand, many of the contestants are survival experts who relish the challenge, and get regular medical checkups etc. OTOH, they routinely discuss their financial motivations. It feels different from the (morally reprehensible) bum fights of the early internet but I could see the argument for rough equivalence.

hertzrat5• 6 years ago

Pardon me, alone is probably the correct name. I can’t remember for sure

philistine• 6 years ago

The early internet had bum fights !?

xwdv2• 6 years ago

These shows are highly produced and lightly scripted, chances are the reality is nothing like what you get on TV.

coldtea7• 6 years ago

Not everything is totally fake (within limits).

The best of those shows don't even have a crew on the island - there are statically positioned cameras and the players operate others themselves.

extr3• 6 years ago

I just finished watching season 6 of Alone and at first found it to be an interesting watch, but as I saw more episodes (and the contestants had been out there longer), I saw more and more of what you're talking about here. And after I finished the show and looked it up online, I was surprised to see just how much of the narrative I had just watched was completely fabricated and morally repugnant. For those who aren't familiar, the premise is 10 people are shipped to a remote destination with the basics (sleeping bag, axe, cord, etc...) and whoever lasts the longest gets $500K ($0 if you lose, I presume). They are also given camera equipment and are responsible for filming themselves. They don't see anyone else while they're out there except a medical team for occasional check-ups. Season 6 took place in northern Canada in near arctic conditions, starting in late fall and continuing through winter.

(Spoilers)

* The skill gap between best/worst contestants is portrayed as minimal. In reality, some contestants came in with years of lived experience thriving in the exact environment of the show (like the victor, who had spent years living in Siberia with people native to the region), or are literally paid professionals (like the army survival instructor, who tapped out because he was so successfully surviving he was bored, and didn't need the money), while others come from difficult backgrounds and have picked up wilderness skills only as a hobby or by necessity. When you find out just how large the skill gap was, and how some of these contestants basically never had a chance, it feels completely exploitive and effectively rigged.

* Contestants give "camera confessions" in classic reality TV style, but these take a very dark turn as the show progresses. Going from "Excited to overcome the mental challenge of isolation", to starving, choking through tears "If I can hang on just a few more days I might be able to win the prize money for my family and give them the life I never had" in just a few episodes. If people are out there doing this for pride or because they enjoy the experience, so be it, but it's another thing entirely to dangle a large monetary prize in front of them. It just feels really sick to be watching people who are incredibly vulnerable and literally dying open up about their traumas and making it very clear they are only sticking it out for the cash. Begging to be allowed to stay when they are clearly underweight and at risk for cardiac issues.

* The final episode makes it seem like the 2 remaining contestants are both just hanging by a thread, a literal starvation contest, which would be sad enough. But if you do some research afterward, you find out that while the 2nd place contestant had lost a dangerous amount of weight and was eating rabbit entrails, the winner had 100s of lbs of food stored (including moose and plenty of fish) and had not lost any weight. Hell, the last (gigantic) fish he caught they apparently brought back and used to feed the production camp.

* All this said, the winner of Season 6, Jordan Jonas, is a very interesting (and apparently humble, good natured) guy, and I have enjoyed reading his commentary on the show on reddit and his blog. The show portrays him as lucky in some respects, probably to make him seem more like the other contestants, but he was in fact using a great deal of very specific techniques and knowledge, like how to build an structurally sound/ideal shelter, track/bait/hunt large game, ice fish, or build structures to keep stored food away from other predators. He himself admits the show obviously created a false narrative around his chances to win.

jonny_eh2• 6 years ago

If the prizes went to charity it could remove the "sad" factor.

appleflaxen• 6 years ago

Thank you for the thorough summary.

It sounds remarkably exploitative and horrible.

These are adults and are free to decide for themselves regarding whether to participate, but I am happy to have your summary, so that I don't have to support the production with viewership.

antcas• 6 years ago

Reminds me of The Running Man by Richard Bachman (Stephen King)

BurningFrog3• 6 years ago

whoever lasts the longest gets $500K ($0 if you lose, I presume).

I don't remember the numbers, but even the non winners are paid fairly well.

dmix• 6 years ago

($0 if you lose, I presume).

The critical assumption...

And reading about how most of these outdoor reality shows are "really" made, it's mostly forced drama long enough for the shot, then surrounded by medics and outdoors experts the minute they need help.

Ericson2314• 6 years ago

If wage-slaves is a phrase, I suppose we can say wage-gladiators.

coldtea7• 6 years ago

to Its Gladiator-Era Glory

Or "infamy". Between gladiator and slave fights to death, executions, and martyrs, it's not more glorious than a concentration camp would be...

hankchinaski• 6 years ago

supposedly Glory is intended as the magnificence that originally had for people at the time

ericmay• 6 years ago

We tend to have different standards for the ancients. For better or worse.

Look at structures such as the Great Wall of China, which according to Wikipedia[1] estimates say hundreds of thousands, up to a million perished during the construction. I’ve never been, but I doubt there is a lot of “wow we were so awful for building this” going on in the tourists centers. Maybe I’m wrong. Potentially the Cultural Revolution had that impact.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China

csomar• 6 years ago

A wall is a really different thing. I guess China (at that time) did the math that the wall construction was going to cost a million life; but a wall was going to save them all from the enemy. So it made sense and actually saved lives.

coldtea7• 6 years ago

I’ve never been, but I doubt there is a lot of “wow we were so awful for building this” going on in the tourists centers.

Well, the weren't awful to begin with.

Whether succesful or not in the end, they built it to avoid Mongol and Manchu raids and invasions, and thus for saving their cities and their lives.

So, people perished are more like "people perished in acts of fortification / defense preparations" than "people killed willy nilly for the entertainment of the emperor and the viewers in the arena".

morsch• 6 years ago

I'm sure many people died building the Great Wall, but the reference for "up to a million" is two travel guides[1], and the reference to "hundreds of thousands" is a throwaway line in pop science book about the Great Wall, whose author gives no evidence on how she arrived at the number. I couldn't find any scholarly articles. Maybe we just don't know how many workers died? Or maybe a search in Chinese would be more fruitful. It seems like something that there would at least be a scholarly agreement on an estimated range.

This doesn't take away from your larger point, which stands regardless of whether ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million died.

[1] I think I'll remove those two references from the article, the revision is currently https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Wall_of_Chi...

BurningFrog3• 6 years ago

The Great Wall wasn't some monument to a vain ruler. It was part of the war effort against invading Mongolians.

People die fighting wars.

eplanit• 6 years ago

I think society has come full circle. You've just named 3 new genres of future reality TV shows.

MichaelMoser1232• 6 years ago

https://www.warriorsandlegends.com/gladiators/the-life-expec... ; they fought 2-3 times a year and would die around age thirty; now that would be the average life expectancy at that time. And you could buy your own freedom after three years. (on the other hand they can't be sure if the average age of thirty for gladiators is correct)

Now you would have it much worse if you were a slave at a silver mine, that would have been the worst fate for a slave - it would be a certain death sentence.

Also slaves in a city were much better off in general than slaves working on farms.

Jtsummers• 6 years ago

they fought 2-3 times a year and would die around age 30; now that would be the average life expectancy at that time. And you could buy your own freedom after three years.

That's life expectancy with high infant mortality included. Life expectancy for those who made it to age 10 was around 50.

ineedasername3• 6 years ago

would die around age 30; now that would be the average life expectancy at that time

Not really: Numbers like that are low because high levels of infant mortality brought the average down. If you lived past that age, going into your 50's was pretty much the norm. So the gladiators were still dying 20+ years before "normal"

birdyrooster2• 6 years ago

How much fighting was necessary to get rid of the PTSD from being a gladiator?

coldtea7• 6 years ago

now that would be the average life expectancy at that time

Taking infant mortality into account. Life expectancy at 25 would be much higher (e.g. if you've made it to 25, you'd be statistically expected to make it to 50-60 or so).

"However, when infant mortality is factored out, life expectancy is doubled to the late-50s. If a Roman survived infancy to their mid-teens, they could, on average, expect near six decades of life"

In general, child mortality ignored, life expenctacy hasn't changed that much through the millenia. Modern sanitary practices and quality of life (running water, etc.) and to a much lesser degree modern medicine gave us around 15-20 years more.

WalterBright3• 6 years ago

Many (most?) of the gladiators were free men, looking to increase their wealth and status by being a successful gladiator.

Gladiators rarely fought to the death.

zw1234562• 6 years ago

I was there a few years back and the thing is really run down, they should really rebuild the whole thing.

And those Pyramids, those things are showing their age, right ?

Don't even get me started on the Parthenon.

kypro• 6 years ago

I'm not sure if you're just joking around, or if this is a critic of restoring and rebuilding ancient monuments, but I know I used to be critical of restoring ancient monuments when I was younger. I thought the process of restoring these sites with new materials and even going so far as to reimagine what parts might have looked like thousands of years ago made the cultural experience somewhat less genuine because I knew a lot what I was seeing was added recently and probably didn't fully reflect what it would have looked like back when it originally built.

But I've become a lot more accepting of the practise the more I've learnt. I don't know much about the Colosseum's history, but I'm sure over the many years it was in operation parts of it would have been being rebuilt and extended. Arguably in most cases the original monument was destroyed long before anybody in modern society touched it.

I also started to realise that without a huge amount of restoration most of my favourite historical places would be almost unrecognisable. For example, if you look at Stone Henge before and after the restoration work you'll see what I mean.

It's also true that without occasional upkeep and maintenance many of these monument wouldn't survive long given the number of visitors they attract each year. So if we need to do some amount of restoration anyway, why not also restore what was lost before modern times?

I think so long as we are respectful and honour the character of what was built before we arrived it's probably fine to do our best to restore what we believe was once there. After all in most cases we're simply continuing what would be a long history of modifications and restorations. If it wasn't for those modifications and restorations we wouldn't be able to enjoy these sites in the first place so we probably have some duty to continue that work for future generations.

zw1234562• 6 years ago

You're not sure I was joking around? Really?

ip26• 6 years ago

The more I come to see history as a way of understanding the past instead of revering it, the more I want to experience faithful restorations.

Imagine trying to understand the culture of NASCAR a thousand years from now by looking at some rusted out car frames in a case.

The best part of floating museums like the USS Bowfin is actually standing there inside the cramped corridor, everything around you (at least appearing) ready for service... you can almost imagine you are there.

shadowofneptune2• 6 years ago

What's most fascinating to me about the Colosseum is how it is a reminder of the post-apocalyptic city Rome was until recently. Parts of it were used for building material, such as in the Vatican, but it survived while the buildings nearby were completely destroyed over time. Even as recently as 250 years ago, parts of Rome had been reclaimed by nature. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Giovanni...

spideymans• 6 years ago

Interesting. Why did people return to Rome?

_petronius• 6 years ago

People never really left Rome: describing it as "post-apocalyptic" is IMO a bit misleading (a real post-apocalyptic cultural transition looks a lot more like what happened to the north American native cultures in the aftermath of European contact than what happened on the Italian peninsula during the collapse of the western empire).

That said, as things like coastlines and rivers changed, settlement patterns evolved, and the post-Imperial city of Rome changed size and political importance, parts of the city that had been inhabited in ancient times did empty out and came to be dominated by abandoned ruins, some of which were quarried for their marble, others left to be buried by sediment and detritus.

I think a more apt comparison here is something like what happened to Detroit, but more so and over a longer period. A good overview using the example of the Forum can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum#Medieval

shadykiller• 6 years ago

Would it be linoleum ?

Get it ? Coleseum - Linoleum :)

Italy Will Rebuild Colosseum’s Floor

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