The Colosseum: the facts, and the myths that are not

Short answer: the Colosseum was built in about ten years, opened in 80 AD with a hundred days of games, held around fifty thousand people and staged spectacles for some four and a half centuries. Its name comes from a statue, not from its size; the holes in its walls are from medieval scavengers, not battles; and two of the most famous things everyone «knows» about it — thumbs down and Christians thrown to the lions here — are not supported by ancient evidence.

The name

Its real name was the Flavian Amphitheatre, after the dynasty that built it. «Colosseum» came later, and most likely from the Colossus — a bronze statue of Nero more than thirty metres tall that stood beside it — rather than from the building’s own size.

Built on Nero’s lake

Vespasian started it around 70 AD on the site of the artificial lake of Nero’s Golden House, and his son Titus opened it in 80 AD with a hundred days of games. Putting a public arena where a hated emperor’s private park had been was a political statement as much as a building project.

Facts the stones still show

• The holes. The outer wall is pitted all over. The blocks were held together with iron clamps, and in the Middle Ages people chiselled into the stone to get the metal out.
• The numbers. Above the ground-floor arches you can still read Roman numerals. Spectators had tokens with their entrance number, and the building’s arches and stairways were laid out so a crowd of tens of thousands could reach their seats quickly.
• The awning. Stone brackets near the top held wooden masts for the velarium, a vast canvas sunshade. Ancient sources say sailors from the fleet were stationed in Rome to work it.
• The orders. Each storey uses a different column order — Doric-style at the bottom, then Ionic, then Corinthian — a scheme Renaissance architects copied endlessly.
• The missing side. The southern outer ring fell in earthquakes, and for centuries the ruin was used as a quarry for stone.

Myth: the vomitoria

The vomitoria were not rooms for vomiting. The word means the passages that «spewed out» the crowd — the wide corridors and stairs that let a full house empty quickly.

Myth: thumbs down meant death

Roman writers mention a gesture with the thumb — pollice verso, «with the thumb turned» — but never say which way it turned. The thumbs-down image comes from a famous painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme in 1872 and from the films that copied it. Some historians argue that a raised or extended thumb was the signal for death; nobody can prove either version.

Myth: Christians were thrown to the lions here

Christians were executed in Rome, including by animals, but no ancient source places such deaths in the Colosseum specifically; the best-known persecutions are associated with other places, such as Nero’s circus. The tradition grew in later centuries. It had one great consequence: in the mid-eighteenth century the Pope consecrated the arena to the martyrs, which helped stop it being used as a quarry. That is why there is a cross on the arena edge today.

True, but argued over: naval battles

Ancient writers say the arena was flooded for mock sea battles during the opening games. Most historians accept this for the earliest years, before the underground service level was built under Domitian; how it was done is still debated. Once the hypogeum existed, flooding was no longer possible.

How long it was used

Gladiator fights faded out in the early fifth century. Animal hunts went on longer — the last recorded ones date to the early sixth century. After that the building became housing, workshops, a fortress and a quarry before it became a monument.

Updated 2026-10-27