[image ALT: Much of my site will be useless to you if you've got the images turned off!]

Roman Amphitheatres

The Colosseum, of course;
looking east through the colonnade of the Temple of Venus and Rome.

Now before we start, repeat after me: an amphitheatre and a theatre are different types of buildings.

Amphi-theatres are "theatres in the round": amphi- means "around" in Greek.

A theatre is a space with a stage, and the audience is on one side of it. People need to hear, so a theatre is relatively small.

An amphitheatre is for action: it's a sports arena, where the spectators sit around the field. They need to see, but they don't really need to hear, so an amphitheatre can be much larger.

Amphitheatres look like this:	and just plain theatres look like this:

This index covers amphitheatres. For the Roman theatre, go here. If you are really interested in the Roman amphitheatre and how it worked, see this article from Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1875) with plans, diagrams, and lots of solid text, further illustrated with some of my better photographs of the Colosseum.

[image ALT: A very large amphitheatre thru a grove of pine trees.]

ROME

Ariminum (Rimini)

Arretium (Arezzo)

1 page, 1 photo

1 page, 1 photo

2 pages, 14 photos

1 page, 1 photo

1 page, 2 photos

1 page, 1 photo

Ocriculum (near Otricoli)

placeholder, 1 photo

Rome:
Amphitheatrum Castrense

2 pages, 2 photos

Rusellae (near Roselle)

1 page, 5 photos

Amphitheatres
in Britain

1 page of text

Images with borders lead to more information.
The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)

UP TO:

Roman Gazetteer

LacusCurtius

Home

A page or image on this site is in the public domain ONLY
if its URL has a total of one *asterisk.
If the URL has two **asterisks,
the item is copyright someone else, and used by permission or fair use.
If the URL has none the item is © Bill Thayer.
See my copyright page for details and contact information.