The Roman Colosseum Deconstructed: 3D Animation Reveals the Hidden Technology That Powered Rome’s Great Arena

Most tourists in Rome put the Colos­se­um at the top of their to-see list. (My own sis­ter-in-law, soon to head out on her Ital­ian hon­ey­moon, plans to head to that sto­ried ruin more or less straight from the air­port.) Even those with no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in ancient Roman civ­i­liza­tion, step­ping into the space that was once the are­na — from the Latin hare­na, refer­ring to the sand laid down to absorb blood shed in com­bat — fills the imag­i­na­tion with images of glad­i­a­tors, lions, sen­a­tors glow­er­ing from their court­side seats, and the bay­ing mass­es behind them. But their visions may not include oth­er such true-to-his­to­ry details as trap doors, staged naval bat­tles, and a sub­ter­ranean sys­tem of tun­nels and ele­va­tors, all of which are explained in the new Decon­struct­ed video above.

Even casu­al Rome enthu­si­asts all know that com­peti­tors and oth­er per­form­ers, both human and ani­mal, made their offi­cial Colos­se­um entrances through the floor. (Announce­ments were made some years ago to the effect that the mech­a­nized floor that made such the­atrics pos­si­ble would be rebuilt by 2023 — a project that seems not to have made much progress as yet, though whether it will end up being put off as long as the Strait of Messi­na Bridge remains to be seen.)

But only the most obses­sive already have a clear under­stand­ing of exact­ly how it worked, which this video clear­ly explains in both words and 3D ren­der­ings, restor­ing ele­ments of not just the build­ing itself but also its imme­di­ate urban con­text that have long since been lost to time.

Take the velar­i­um, a retractable awning con­sist­ing of “long strips of fab­ric wound around drums, which were mount­ed on a wood­en frame and sup­port­ed by 240 masts fixed into sock­ets along the amphithe­ater’s upper cor­nice.” With each of its 240 strips oper­at­ed by a sep­a­rate winch, it required at least as many human oper­a­tors to deploy or retract at speed — a greater speed, per­haps, than the oper­a­tion of some of the retractable roofs incor­po­rat­ed into sports facil­i­ties today. Not “just a feat of engi­neer­ing, but also a pre­cur­sor for mod­ern sta­di­um design,” the velar­i­um addressed a prob­lem that will hard­ly escape the notice of mod­ern tourists today — espe­cial­ly those who vis­it the Colos­se­um in the mid­dle of a sum­mer day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Build­ing the Colos­se­um: The Icon of Rome

What Hap­pened to the Miss­ing Half of the Roman Colos­se­um?

How Much Would It Cost to Build the Colos­se­um Today?

When the Colos­se­um in Rome Became the Home of Hun­dreds of Exot­ic Plant Species

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: the Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

Rome’s Colos­se­um Will Get a New Retractable Floor by 2023 — Just as It Had in Ancient Times

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.