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00:00Ancient Rome, heart of a powerful empire, and home to an architectural masterpiece,
00:19the Colosseum. The Colosseum is the largest amphitheater ever built in the Roman world.
00:26The most famous, the most impressive monument in the ancient city of Rome.
00:35Built to amaze, but also to entertain, educate, and control.
00:47We get a sense of incredible engineering, incredible architecture, and of course what took place here
00:54is something that still leaves us in awe.
00:59Now, archaeologists are taking a closer look at this icon of the Roman Empire,
01:05revealing its former glory.
01:08The most exciting thing about this excavation is that it gave us the opportunity to touch the very origin of the Colosseum.
01:16And further research across the Roman world is shedding light on long-held myths about this great amphitheater and the Empire itself.
01:28It makes it possible to prove what they ate, how they lived, how they trained, so it was just super exciting.
01:34How does the Colosseum and the games that went on inside reflect Rome's political, financial, and military fortunes?
01:48It's in many ways one of the most political buildings of the city of Rome, and arguably of the Roman Empire as a whole.
01:54The rise and fall of the Colosseum.
02:09The year is 80 CE.
02:1250,000 Romans, from senators to slaves, arrive at the brand new Colosseum.
02:17Entrance is free, a gift from the Emperor.
02:23The inaugural games are about to begin.
02:28Trained hunters known as Venatoris slaughter exotic animals from across the Empire.
02:39Criminals are forced to act out ancient myths before their execution.
02:48And the highlight, gladiator fights.
02:53Hundreds of them.
03:03What you see inside the games is a microcosm of the reality of the world order.
03:09Rome is in charge. The Emperor is in charge.
03:13When those first games were held, the Emperor ruled over territory that spread from North Africa to Germany, from the north of England to Syria.
03:25Over 40 million people.
03:28Two million square miles.
03:30The opening of the Colosseum marked the dawn of Rome's Golden Age.
03:37A period of peace, strength, and immense prosperity.
03:42This is the epicenter of the entire Roman Empire under the emperors.
03:47Two thousand years later, only portions of the amphitheater remain.
03:58The wooden arena floor, seating stands, and internal corridors have long since collapsed.
04:04Now, a new large-scale excavation of the Colosseum is underway.
04:14There it is. There.
04:16These are the splinters from the boards of the wooden frame.
04:20We're going to conserve it and take it to be analyzed.
04:24Researchers want to understand how the Colosseum was built and what it originally looked like.
04:37Lead archaeologist Federica Rinaldi oversees the team.
04:42We are working on the Colosseum's southern side, an area that very little is known about.
04:56Only the northern facade of the Colosseum remains standing.
05:01To the south, an earthquake in the 14th century brought down the outer corridors and walls,
05:07an area later paved over.
05:15The archaeologists are digging where these structures once stood,
05:19down into the Colosseum's very foundations.
05:24We decided to remove this cobblestone pavement and start digging,
05:29layer by layer, this immense area of 3,000 square meters
05:34to restore the story of the Colosseum.
05:41It's the first systematic exploration of this vast area
05:46that once supported two huge parallel corridors.
05:53Technical architect Barbara Nassaro is part of the research team.
05:58She is studying the methods used to build the Colosseum.
06:02This is a very, very hard concrete made with mortar and a basaltic stone,
06:10which gives a very, very hard foundation,
06:14because we know that the Colosseum was nearly 50 meters high.
06:19It was very heavy, and so it needed a very deep foundation.
06:23The foundation is two levels, that's more or less 14 meters.
06:28The thick foundations, thought to extend under the whole structure, are nearly 45 feet in depth,
06:39and held the weight of the massive Colosseum, an estimated 990 million pounds.
06:45The immense weight came from its building materials.
06:50Limestone, dense volcanic rock, bricks, concrete, and thousands of iron clamps that held the stones together.
07:00Today, much of the original material is gone, taken and reused over time.
07:08But there's enough left of the Colosseum for archaeologists to understand how the crowds entered this great structure to enjoy the games.
07:18The entrance to the Colosseum took place along a radial axis, not via a circular route, like today.
07:32There were, in fact, 76 entrances for the public, who entered in this direction.
07:44Each had a ticket, on which was engraved the number of the arcade they had to go through.
07:52And then, going up the stairs, they would reach their seats.
07:57Important officials and various organizations, like guilds, allocated tickets to citizens.
08:12But who were the spectators that came to watch the games?
08:16And once through the numbered arches, how did they know where to sit?
08:19While much of the Colosseum's internal structure has long since collapsed, Pompeii is home to the first stone amphitheater ever built.
08:32It's 150 years older than the Colosseum, and much better preserved.
08:40Darius Aria has studied the remains in detail.
08:43We have some corridors that lead you directly to the best seats in the house, the ringside seats.
08:50And then we have external staircases all around here, and that's going to take you to the higher located seats.
08:58The stadium was designed to maintain a strict segregation of social classes.
09:04What we see is that there's a rigid categorization of people.
09:11You literally have a blueprint of how society works.
09:15The most important people have the best seats, are closest to the action.
09:19And as you make your way up into the nosebleed seats, well, you're less and less important.
09:25Reminding you of your place in that Roman society.
09:28Classics historian Shushma Malik has spotted clues suggesting the same was true at the Colosseum.
09:43When we think about the seating arrangements, the different levels are made from different materials.
09:48So at the bottom we've got more brick and solid stone, but as we work our way up to the top, the materials become wooden.
09:56So less comfortable, less secure.
09:59This represents the difference in who's sitting in the different places in the Colosseum.
10:04On the ground floor, huge corridors 30 feet tall display exquisite reliefs.
10:13The top floor arcades are smaller and left plain.
10:16At the bottom we've got the elite, so we're talking about senators and equestrians, who are the richest people in society.
10:25And then as we go further up, in our next layer we've got male citizens.
10:30And then as we go further up, you have the other category of society, which is the rest essentially.
10:37So non-citizens, the enslaved and women.
10:41Everyone in the crowd knew their place.
10:44We're looking really at a space that restates the political and social order, and that on the one hand gives people plenty of entertainment and plenty of fun, but also gives the people in charge, the men in charge, the opportunity to control very closely who's doing what and where.
11:12The Colosseum was more than a place for entertainment.
11:18It was a demonstration of power to maintain control.
11:22And from the remains uncovered by the archaeologists today, it's possible to understand what the Colosseum looked like when it hosted gladiator games.
11:36In front of me, there's a square section that has a very smooth surface.
11:50On top of this footprint, there would have rested blocks of travertine, at least 90 centimeters tall.
12:01They formed the base of the pillars that supported the arches.
12:06Travertine is a dense type of limestone that was quarried locally.
12:15Archeologists estimate that more than 250,000 tons were used to build the Colosseum.
12:21The uncovered architectural footprints reveal where lost archways once stood and enable archaeologists to create a virtual model of the Colosseum, with its collapsed southern walls still intact.
12:39108 arcades stood here stacked on top of each other over three floors, almost 130 feet in the air.
12:49On the ground floor, senators and senior politicians reached ringside seats through corridors reserved exclusively for their use, while the public followed a network of staircases and hallways that took them to seats determined by social status.
13:11And at the center of the amphitheater, the emperor and his entourage.
13:25The archaeology here has revealed detailed information about what the Colosseum looked like when first built.
13:33But there's still more to uncover.
13:36What they did is to create these drains inside the foundation.
13:45The floor of these drains was made with bipedali, which are square bricks.
13:55The drains would have prevented the Colosseum from flooding during heavy rains and taken away whatever refuse built up on game days.
14:03This was full of things like nowadays drains, so water, rubbish, something coming from toilets, and any washing and cleaning that was done inside.
14:17Also burns from food, seeds of the food they ate during the day, and probably some animals that was killed inside too.
14:27But the drains reveal something else.
14:32Maria Rosaria, look, there's a stamp. Can you see its shape?
14:39Yes, it's a half moon. I can read roofie.
14:44The Romans stamped their bricks so that each factory could be held accountable for the quality of its products.
14:53Thanks to the huge database of brick stamps from imperial Rome, we can say that this stamp dates to Vespasian's time.
15:07It's proof that the Colosseum's foundation was built in the reign of Vespasian, the ninth emperor of Rome.
15:14He took the throne in 69 CE.
15:23Vespasian comes up with the decision of building the amphitheater in Rome in the early months, really, of his reign.
15:31The project begins in 72 CE.
15:38Why did he build the Colosseum and choose this location for him?
15:46Vespasian followed the reign of an infamous ruler, Nero.
15:51Just yards from the Forum, the central hub of ancient Rome, Nero had built himself a huge palatial complex.
16:03The Domus Aurea, or the Golden House.
16:07The very construction of that palace had led to the eviction of thousands of people from really a central site in the city of Rome.
16:17So it is a monument of despotism, it is a monument of extravagance and imperial corruption.
16:22And Nero didn't stop there.
16:25Alongside his grand estate, he built a huge statue of himself, 100 feet tall, known as the Colossus.
16:38So we're talking about a megalomaniac, we're talking about a person that wants to leave his mark in the city.
16:46After Nero's death, warring factions attempted to claim the Roman throne.
16:51In the political fallout, there's a lot of bloodshed, there's a lot of uncertainty.
16:58And from that competition, that Game of Thrones experience, there's one man that remains standing.
17:04His name was Vespasian.
17:09Vespasian was not of royal blood, but a military man.
17:14A general.
17:15His first challenge, building a relationship with his people.
17:25So what did he do?
17:28Vespasian is on an important political populist mission.
17:33He gives back to the people what Nero had taken away.
17:40And builds the greatest structure for spectacles in the Roman Empire.
17:51Vespasian built the Colosseum on the grounds of Nero's vast estate.
17:55And the Colossus statue was reshaped into the Roman god Sol.
18:01Savvy political gestures to erase Nero's legacy and establish a new dynasty.
18:08The Flavians.
18:09The building of the Flavian Amphitheatre was central to the political program of Vespasian.
18:22It was, first and foremost, a major statement of the fact that he was the new guy in charge.
18:27By 80 CE, after only eight years, the great amphitheatre is finished.
18:49But the emperor celebrating the first ever games at the Colosseum isn't Vespasian.
18:54Vespasian had a very distinguished career as emperor.
18:58He transformed the city, building the first public amphitheatre on such a grand scale.
19:04Unfortunately for him, he didn't live to see its completion.
19:11Vespasian achieves something very remarkable.
19:14He dies in his own bed.
19:16Never a mean feat for a Roman emperor.
19:20Vespasian dies only months before the Colosseum's grand opening.
19:25Titus succeeds his father.
19:27He gets the glory of celebrating the games.
19:32It was, in many ways, his big day.
19:39He was, by inaugurating the amphitheatre, as he was then known, announcing, advertising, stating the beginning of a new era.
19:50Of a new golden era.
19:56Rome's golden age would see the empire reach peak prosperity and military strength.
20:06How did the entertainment within the Colosseum reflect the grandeur of the mighty Roman Empire?
20:13The main event in the afternoon each day, it's man against man.
20:17It's world-famous gladiators going head to head.
20:22Gladiators are central to our story.
20:24Public entertainment in Rome, they are central to the story of the Colosseum.
20:26The Colosseum was primarily built to host gladiatorial contests.
20:33It would become the most iconic venue for these spectacles.
20:38But there was more to these clashes than a simple fight to the death.
20:43In Rome, Alexander Mariotti is a specialist in gladiatorial combat.
21:00He believes the only way to truly understand a gladiator is to become one.
21:05Experimental archeology is an interesting way to get another perspective that the sources don't give us.
21:12Once you put on the armor, once you fight with the weapons, you start to gain a physical knowledge and a physical memory.
21:19You understand the hardships.
21:21Things as simple as the inability to breathe, your perception of what you can actually see, the weight of the helmet, the tiredness that comes through the physical combat.
21:30So it's a great way of sort of filling in the gaps that we have through history.
21:36The sport is entirely different than we've been led to believe.
21:41Every time that I go in the arena, I think about the real gladiators, what they have in their mind.
21:48You know, a lot of people wants to see you fight and see the blood, so you should make entertainment for the people of Rome.
22:00More than 15 different classes of gladiators, distinguished by their weapons, armor and fighting styles, fought inside the Coliseum.
22:24Through their armor, through their weapons, they have advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses.
22:37One of the most popular battles was between two specific classes.
22:42The Retiarius versus the Secutor.
22:46This is a fan favorite. This is the Retiarius.
22:48He was the only one whose face you could see. And that made him human.
22:53The thing about gladiator helmets is that they dehumanized the fighter.
22:57He became more of a robot.
22:59He didn't show expressions of pain.
23:04Whereas the Retiarius is us. We can see him, we can see his expressions.
23:07As a way of projecting authority over the Roman people, many classes of gladiators were inspired by the ancient enemies of Rome.
23:19But by the time the Coliseum was inaugurated in 80 CE, most gladiators were professional athletes who chose to fight.
23:32The Retiarius was a newer class of gladiator.
23:37Fighting without a helmet, he was an everyman, a simple fisherman.
23:43So he has two weapons which are pretty iconic. He's got a trident over here and a net. The net is really a very dramatic piece of equipment.
23:56You can imagine them swinging it in the middle of the arena, the people loving it.
24:03The Retiarius had the advantage of mobility, but little protection.
24:09Unlike his opponents.
24:13The Secutor here is a tank.
24:16He's got not only this massive helmet, which if you look at it objectively, has a little bit of a fish-like quality.
24:23Small eye holes, a fin on the top. And so we have a theme to the fight.
24:31This is a fight of nature. Man versus nature. The fish against the fishermen.
24:37Man versus nature. Rome against its enemies.
24:48Gladiator fights were more than sporting contests.
24:54They were a part of Rome's national identity.
24:58And it's the clash of these two, who's going to win, that makes it exciting for the Roman audience.
25:07That's what it is. It's a show.
25:10During Rome's golden age, the Colosseum would showcase around 100 gladiatorial fights per year.
25:20Most games were organized by the emperor, but also by wealthy aristocrats intending to further their political careers.
25:33How did Rome produce enough skilled fighters to keep the crowds entertained?
25:39More than 400 miles from Rome lay the border town of Carnuntum, in what is today, Austria.
25:53The remains of these amphitheaters, almost two miles apart, are nearly all that's visible in the settlement today.
26:04Professor Wolfgang Neubauer has been working at the site for over 30 years.
26:11The Roman Carnuntum was a really important town.
26:17It is one of the hotspots of the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 3rd century.
26:24Located on the banks of the Danube River, Carnuntum was a thriving center of commerce and home to 50,000 citizens.
26:33And it still lies here, untouched, under farmland and pristine countryside.
26:45Carnuntum is very special because it has never been overbuilt.
26:49All the remains are still preserved in the ground.
26:52So it's all there.
26:58The town is about 10 square kilometers.
27:00It's absolutely impossible to excavate something like this.
27:06But there is another way to do archaeology.
27:18Wolfgang and his team are pioneers of non-invasive archaeology.
27:23They combine LIDAR, ground-penetrating radar, and magnetometry to create detailed models of the structures below the ground.
27:38Wolfgang's survey reveals the sprawling infrastructure around the larger of the two amphitheaters for the first time.
27:48We can actually really walk into this data and see all the different details.
27:54And one mysterious building stands out.
28:01The scans show four stone walls surrounding a round wooden structure, more than 60 feet in diameter.
28:11The most amazing thing was a circular structure.
28:15And when we looked closer to this circular structure, it looked like a small amphitheater.
28:20And in the center of this circular feature was one individual hole, a post hole.
28:27We realized that this might be the foundation of Apollos.
28:29Roman sources described the palos as a wooden post that gladiators used to practice their sword blows, like a timber punching bag.
28:43One typical place to find a palos would have been a gladiator school.
28:48We had to verify this, so we made an excavation and we found the foundation of the palos in the center of the training arena.
28:58And this made it clear that we really found a school of gladiators in Canunto.
29:01This gladiator school has remained preserved beneath the ground for almost 2,000 years.
29:10It's the first of its kind to be found outside Italy.
29:14While the first gladiators were simply prisoners of war, over time a whole industry developed around the game's participants.
29:27Even freemen chose the life of a gladiator and were turned into professional fighters in schools such as this one.
29:36And the most prestigious school of all was discovered in the 1930s under a city block adjacent to the Colosseum.
29:50Right here in the shadow of the Colosseum is this large sprawling complex.
29:56You can actually see quite clearly there's a massive curved wall.
30:00This structure is an amphitheater.
30:02But what is another arena doing right next to the Colosseum?
30:07This structure is known as the Ludus Magnus.
30:10And that means in Latin, the big school.
30:12So this is really the epitome of gladiator schools throughout the Roman Empire.
30:16This is number one.
30:18Evidence of its lost grandeur is still easy to spot.
30:23Take a look right here.
30:24All right.
30:26So what you have here is a marble plug and then right next to it's a little piece of a metal pin.
30:31That's part of the attachment system to which you would adhere panels of marble.
30:36Those panels of marble are stripped away, but this tells us they were there.
30:40Which means that this gladiator school was beautifully decorated.
30:44Because the emperor's owned this, it means money is no object.
30:47This is just imperial magnificence.
30:49You can imagine the emperor coming to watch some of the performances in this practice arena.
30:56That's the prestige of the Ludus Magnus.
31:02The barracks were at least two, even three stories high.
31:05So hundreds and hundreds of gladiators.
31:07Every day they're practicing, they're training, getting ready for the main event in the Colosseum.
31:11You want to think about it being like coming to Madison Square Garden.
31:20You've made it.
31:21You've established yourself.
31:22You're coming from all over the empire and now you're going to the great big show.
31:26The remains of the gladiator school hint at how far the Romans went to provide the best entertainment.
31:35But is there a way to learn more about the gladiators themselves?
31:42Vienna, Austria, home to the lab of forensic anthropologist Fabian Kanz, an expert in human remains.
32:02For us as humans, everything we do leaves traces in our skeleton.
32:06Fabian and his team were called in to examine the remains of more than 60 bodies,
32:18found buried in a mass grave over 600 miles from the Colosseum,
32:24in a Roman cemetery in Ephesus, Turkey.
32:29All but one turned out to be male.
32:33Then we start finding injuries.
32:36This was just overwhelming how many injuries we found.
32:44There are just two options.
32:45Maybe they have been soldiers or they have been gladiators.
32:50What is really impressive on this call is a really massive sharp force wound
32:55and there is kind of tearing, which means this must be caused by a barbed instrument.
33:03The only weapon that could have torn bones in this way was the barbed tip of a trident.
33:10And only gladiators used tridents in combat.
33:14Never soldiers.
33:15There was a moment where we put all these clues together.
33:21We have this group with just males in it.
33:24We have this very high amount of healed and unhealed trauma.
33:30This all together fitted very well that these are the remains of gladiators.
33:34These are the first gladiator bones ever found, let alone studied in this kind of detail.
33:44That makes it possible to prove what they ate, how they lived, how they trained.
33:49So it was just super exciting.
33:53Signs of damage to one of the skulls catch Fabian's eye.
33:57He zooms in to inspect the wound more closely.
34:06This is the frontal bone of the skull.
34:08And as you can see here, there is a massive sharp force trauma.
34:12The chance to survive this is very low.
34:14But you can see all the borders of the injury are smooth.
34:19This means it was professionally treated.
34:22All the little bone splints and everything picked out.
34:26Therefore, it recovered nearly perfectly.
34:31It's evidence that this person was treated for a severe skull fracture and survived.
34:37Proof that gladiators received sophisticated medical attention.
34:41The most renowned physician in the Roman Empire, Galen, wrote about treating wounded gladiators in his city of Pergamon in modern-day Turkey.
34:52He claims to have saved all the men in his care.
34:56We know from the books that gladiators have the best medical treatment at that time.
35:03But now we have the physical evidence to prove this.
35:06Ancient accounts also revealed that the training and upkeep of these warriors was financed by the managers of gladiator schools.
35:17It was a big investment.
35:20A lot of money could be made from top gladiators performing well at lavish games organized by rich Romans or the Emperor.
35:28But did the special treatment of gladiators go beyond emergency medicine?
35:39Fabian cuts a bone sample.
35:42And freeze-dries the fragment with liquid nitrogen.
35:47Before grinding it into powder and mixing it into a solution.
36:03A flame spectrometer can reveal the presence of different elements in a liquid to analyze its chemical composition.
36:09Fabian tests the bone solution for any unusual elements.
36:18The flame burns bright red.
36:21And then you see it's very intense.
36:24Evidence of the element strontium.
36:26Strontium.
36:28Strontium, normally found in only trace amounts, strengthens bones, improving mobility, making them more resistant to fractures and protecting vital organs from injury.
36:41All of which would enhance the fitness of a fighter.
36:46And perhaps make the difference between life and death in combat.
36:50But these gladiator bones contain unusually large amounts.
36:57It was not just a little bit more.
37:00They had double the amount than normal people at that time.
37:03The body obtained strontium primarily through dietary intake.
37:13Ancient texts mention that gladiators drank a special brew,
37:17made from burned bones or plants.
37:23Burning bones, wood or bark to ash increases natural strontium levels.
37:30Drinking this mixture boosted the gladiator's intake.
37:35Fabian believes this could explain the superhuman levels of strontium in the skeletons.
37:40You have to think about this ash drink like we drink nowadays after sports.
37:49These fizzy tablets.
37:51And this was pretty much the same.
37:55From advanced healthcare to strontium supplements.
37:59Nothing was spared in pursuit of the ultimate warrior.
38:02But there was more to the Colosseum than just gladiator fights.
38:13Hunting wild animals was also hugely popular.
38:19And new archaeology and research revealed the scope of these performances.
38:24At the Sapienza University of Rome, zooarchaeologist Claudia Minniti examines animal remains
38:36recovered from the Colosseum's sewer systems.
38:40The Colosseum is the only amphitheater which has given us such a vast quantity of animal remains.
38:46It's an exceptional collection.
38:48Cleaning them reveals details that can identify the animals.
39:04Carnivores usually have sharp teeth for cutting and tearing meat.
39:08Whereas herbivores teeth are flat.
39:10This skull has teeth that are characteristic of a carnivore.
39:20Although it must have had a somewhat omnivorous diet.
39:25Because the teeth have both sharp and flat surfaces.
39:31From the teeth, I can tell this is a bear.
39:35Other skulls belong to everyday animals.
39:42Horses and dogs.
39:44But Claudia homes in on a more unusual fight.
39:50Here we have two radius bones from different individuals.
39:57The radius is a bone found in the front legs of animals.
40:00They are the same shape as the radius of a domestic cat.
40:10This tells me that we are dealing with the remains of large felines.
40:17To identify which species, Claudia compares the size of these bones to those of big cats living today.
40:29These are therefore two large individuals that fall within the range of lions.
40:46In particular, the largest bone proves to be very large.
40:51Probably belonging to a very large male.
40:55Which was specifically chosen to be used in the games.
41:03This collection of bones also reveals lions weren't the only exotic animals used in the Colosseum.
41:13This measurement fits within the range of a leopard rather than a lion.
41:18These animals from far flung corners of the empire left the crowds in no doubt of Rome's dominion over the known world.
41:33From the very beginning, no expense was spared to provide entertainment for the masses.
41:39And the spectacle didn't stop there.
41:44Ancient writers suggest the inaugural games included an event even more extraordinary.
41:56One that demonstrated the empire's political, financial and military might.
42:05A show that would stretch Roman ingenuity to the limit.
42:14In the heart of Rome, Darius Aria examines ancient texts that describe the first games held at the brand new amphitheater.
42:22Take a look at this. Fort Titus suddenly filled this same theater with water.
42:29And he brought in people on ships who engaged in a sea fight there.
42:34We're talking about ship battles in the Colosseum.
42:38This passage from Roman historian Cassius Dio was written more than 100 years after the inaugural games.
42:43He never witnessed the event himself.
42:44But naval battles had been acted out before on artificial lakes.
42:58Could they really have been staged in an amphitheater?
43:01And we're talking about flooding the largest arena in the ancient world.
43:08It would have been a Herculean task to carry something like this out.
43:12So how do they manage to do this?
43:15It would take extraordinary skill to build such a system.
43:20A recent engineering investigation into the Colosseum reveals it might have been possible.
43:26Researchers suggest large ducts that ran around the building's circumference fed into shallow channels that could have filled the arena.
43:37Calculations based on their capacity prove that if flooded, the arena could have then been drained in just a few hours.
43:44This sounds like an incredible challenge, but the Romans were masters in engineering and the manipulation of water.
43:55The Colosseum, as it is today, reveals no direct evidence that naval battles took place here.
44:05Too much of its internal structures collapsed, leaving researchers with many unanswered questions.
44:11But the network of channels and the contemporary texts suggest that naval reenactments with scaled-down ships may well have been a reality.
44:26Just imagine it, now you have this huge arena of the Colosseum, flooded with water, filled with ships, manned by sailors, with these ships ramming into each other and the sailors fighting each other to the death.
44:45This is the kind of experience that would have made the Colosseum legendary.
44:50But just ten years after those first games, the Colosseum underwent an upgrade, adding infrastructure that would make spectacles even more extraordinary.
45:10So not long after Titus opens the Colosseum and there are the inaugural games, he dies and his brother Domitian takes over.
45:29The Flavians have been in power for a little over a decade.
45:37And Domitian lacks the respect that his father Vespasian or brother Titus had.
45:44He is keen to make his mark.
45:48One of the things Domitian pays attention to is the Colosseum.
45:52Domitian is thinking about developments he can make to make the games more spectacular.
45:57By throwing games that will keep the people entertained, he's making sure that they also see him as a good emperor and he remains popular.
46:12During the games, emperors would shower the audience with gifts.
46:17Food, tokens for prizes, money.
46:20Successful tactics to win the support of the Roman public.
46:30Domitian went even further.
46:32The games were hugely popular, so he added a fourth level to the Colosseum,
46:38which made room for more than 10,000 additional spectators.
46:43And increased its height from 130 to almost 160 feet.
46:48The equivalent of a 15-story building.
46:53Not only did he expand the Colosseum to new heights,
46:57he dug down, creating the Hypogeum, an underground chamber.
47:04A huge expanse beneath the arena floor.
47:08It replaced any water control system that may once have been in place.
47:15But how did this labyrinth of passages help entertain the crowds?
47:22Federica descends into the belly of the Colosseum.
47:27The Hypogeum is a maze of 14 corridors, lined with 32 small chambers.
47:43In many places, the floors are marked by mysterious holes.
47:48Here we see a quadrangular block of travertine, in the center of which there is a circular hole bordered by an enclosure, a metal structure that also bears a number.
48:07Within the walls that surround the holes, grooves and shapes in the stonework add to the mystery.
48:19By examining all these features together, archaeologists have managed to reconstruct the intricate system.
48:27The bronze inlay once held a wooden column that, when turned, would hoist a caged animal or man from a holding cell up to the arena floor.
48:41These hatches open suddenly, from which, just as suddenly, come out scared, hungry animals, ready to perform on the arena floor.
48:59Emperor Domitian had transformed the area below the Colosseum into 130,000 square feet of high-tech stagecraft.
49:16The crowning glory of the greatest amphitheater in the Roman Empire.
49:23A magnificent venue for almost 60,000 people.
49:29The empire, in its sheer diversity, in its exotic, mesmerizing quality, comes to town, and it comes to town first and foremost at the Colosseum.
49:44The Colosseum would continue to host thousands of games for the next 400 years.
49:52A showcase for the emperor to demonstrate his authority over the Roman populace.
49:59But when Rome falls to barbarian invaders at the end of the fifth century, the Colosseum is on borrowed time.
50:20Rome remains an important city.
50:21The Colosseum remains an important time-honored monument in the city of Rome, but the empire is no more.
50:33Without the empire, Rome can no longer afford the luxury of the Colosseum.
50:46Written accounts reveal animal hunts and acrobatic displays were performed here in 523.
50:51After that, the historical record is silent.
51:02But was this really the end?
51:06Amongst the ancient trash excavated from the Colosseum's sewers, the archeologists make a discovery.
51:12When it arrived here, apart from the earthy crustaceans, it didn't present any type of corrosion, so it was in excellent condition.
51:25It's a finely crafted ring of almost pure gold.
51:40The most special thing is that inside we found a small ball, probably in gold, which jingles inside this cage.
51:49Can I hear it?
51:53Yes, we can hear it a little.
51:56But the golden ring presents a puzzle.
52:02The shape, the presence of this design, suggests it was made between the sixth and seventh centuries.
52:12Records state the games at the Colosseum ended by the early sixth century.
52:19But if this ring was crafted later, a person of wealth was in the Colosseum long after the games finished.
52:32Why were they there?
52:35What were they watching?
52:41Questions for future archeologists to answer.
52:44The Colosseum had hosted bloody entertainment for almost half a millennium.
53:06It reflected the golden age of the Roman Empire.
53:09But without the empire to pay for expenses, this once great venue was abandoned.
53:18Over the coming centuries, Rome herself would move on, returning to greatness as the center of Western Christianity.
53:27And this new Rome found a way to repurpose the ancient monument.
53:36I'm standing in front of St. Peter's Basilica.
53:38This is the most famous church of the Roman Catholic world.
53:41If you take a look at the balcony and then the rest of the facade, we see these beautifully articulated architectural features.
53:49It's all the same creamy white limestone called travertine.
53:54And it should look familiar.
53:55We've got written documentation in the Renaissance of thousands of cartloads of travertine stone brought directly from the Colosseum to build St. Peter's Basilica.
54:09The ultimate irony, if we think about the Colosseum and its bloodshed and its violence, and we have that grand arena for gladiatorial bouts living on.
54:24Its stones transformed and reused as part of the heart of the new spiritual empire, the heart of the Catholic Church here in St. Peter's.
54:34Not every stone was taken.
54:40What remains is the ruin we see today.
54:45Still standing almost 2,000 years later, it's a potent reminder of ancient Rome's bravado and brilliance.
54:55Evidence of its cruel and callous culture.
54:58But an enduring symbol of an empire that once transformed the world.
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