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Remains of an Amphitheatre

[image ALT: an oval depression in the grass, seen from a long ways above]

This is pretty much the best possible view of it. From close up, it just looks like grass and ruins; but from the Belvedere 60 m above, the outline can be grasped.

The image is clickable: most of the larger features open to large detail pictures in a separate window.

I found the amphitheatre very hard to read.

Most of it was quarried out long ago: some say to build the nearby church of S. Claudio, but for various reasons I don't want to believe this. More about that later probably, but in the meanwhile I've collected some detailed photos of the masonry of both the amphitheatre and S. Claudio on this comparison page.

At any rate, once quarrying starts, erosion, earthquakes, children and other natural forces compound the destruction: a young Spellano told me that when he was a kid he used to play here with his friends and they would build little things out of cubes of mosaic. Any mosaic has understandably long since vanished, unless it's been covered back up.

Here then are some photographic fragments. Click on them to open larger images, some of which similarly open further to show even more detail.

General Views:
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Page updated: 30 Apr 98