Original subtitles

The most famous monument in the world,

the pulsating heart of the Roman Empire

where heroes where made and broken.

Two thousand years of human drama have left their mark

on the stone, brick, and mortar of this iconic arena.

Underneath the grime are hidden details coming to light

only now as a controversial renovation project

returns the Colosseum to its ancient glory.

This is Rome, the Eternal City,

the center of the greatest empire of the ancient world.

At its heart, was the Colosseum.

Two thousand years after it was built,

this iconic monument is in dire need of repair.

Through a unique public/private partnership,

the Colosseum is getting a historic facelift.

I think that beyond being a pleasure,

it is also our duty to do these things.

The Colosseum is a symbol that represents Italy.

It is a monument that everyone worldwide loves.

Today, restorers carefully strip away centuries of grime

to reveal the Colosseum in its original colors.

The scaffolding stretches to the top of the imposing monument.

A lift takes workers up 55 meters

to one of the most stunning views of the city.

Beneath this layer of dirt,

taking away and freeing the monument

and making it more beautiful aesthetically,

there are still many things to discover.

Rome is the most famous city in the world.

Millions of tourists each year come to visit the Vatican,

heart of the Catholic faith and admire Rome's ancient ruins.

This monument fascinates because of its

uninterrupted history.

People came here continuously except for a few periods,

a continual use, a continual transformation.

Although the Forum was ancient Rome's political center,

it was the Colosseum that Romans loved,

where the emperors paid for quality entertainment

to win the hearts of the citizens.

Construction began around 70 AD

and ended ten years later.

80, 000 spectators watched gladiatorial games every day

for 100 days to inaugurate the arena,

a celebration fit for the greatest of all amphitheaters.

Bread and circuses.

Get the people bread and circuses,

a full stomach and something to look at.

They will never have a revolution.

That is something the leaders of Rome understood perfectly.

The seismic activity and pollution of a modern city

with a population of six million is taking its toll

on the Colosseum, the tallest building in Rome

apart from the great marble monument to

Italian unification in nearby Piazza Venezia.

Traffic in the heart of Rome is a constant threat

to the ancient monuments.

In a 3-year, 25 million Euro restoration project,

scientists, engineers, and artisans are meticulously

cleaning and repairing the massive monument,

and preserving the historic arena for future generations.

Cinzia Conti is in charge of the massive task,

which involves using the tiniest hammers and brushes

to carefully chip, wash, and repair grime and damage

that threatens the structure.

The surface of the Colosseum is 22,452 square meters.

It is an old monument, but it is in good shape.

It is solid.

The organization of the construction site requires that

we see what there is underneath the soft deposited layer.

One man who is often in the public eye

has taken the fate of the Colosseum to heart,

and battled through layers

of Italian bureaucracy to preserve it.

The owner of luxury shoe and leatherwear brand Tod's,

Diego Della Valle, has put his name on the line

to restore the Colosseum and in the process,

realized a dream that goes back to his youth.

I saw the Colosseum as a young boy.

We went on a school trip, and we left this small town

in a bus and we arrived in Rome after a very long trip.

And when I saw the Colosseum, it was this

giant thing and I never forgot it.

Every time I go to Rome and pass the Colosseum

on my way to the airport or somewhere else,

I see it and it pleases me that we are able to

lend a hand and save something so emblematic.

Across Italy, major monuments are being restored

with the help of discreetly branded sponsorship.

You have a lot of people that say,

"I want to contribute, and ultimately"

"I'd like to be recognized for making that contribution."

And this is what happened in Ancient Rome as well,

except for they really put their names on the monuments.

Critics warn agains seeing these gestures

as pure altruism.

In exchange for his 25 million Euro contribution,

Della Valle gets the right to use the logo of the monument

on his products for years to come

and print his company's logo on the back

of the Colosseum's entry tickets.

Marketing and advertising potentially worth millions.

It is not a given, however, that he will do so.

It is important to do it for the country

and get nothing in exchange,

because it is a strong symbolic gesture.

In the Anglo-Saxon world, those who do this

sort of operation, sometimes they have sponsorship

or sometimes they study the mechanisms

for how it can be useful for their group,

normal things that I think are good to do.

But in our case, it was just a case of, "We are Italians."

"Here we are, our country gave us a lot."

"We are proud to be Italians,"

"and happy to help the Colosseum."

The Colosseum may be the greatest

amphitheater of the Romans, but it was not the first.

Gladiatorial combat was held at least 250 years

beforehand in the arenas in Capua and Paestum.

The breathtaking amphitheater of Verona in Northern Italy,

is also older than the Colosseum by 40 years.

It has been completely restored and rendered safe

for entertainment and public use today.

There were other amphitheaters before the Colosseum.

The Verona Arena is interpreted from a historical standpoint

as a step in the evolution of the amphitheater.

And it was important for the construction of

the Flavian Amphitheater

which is the biggest of the Roman world.

These ancient amphitheaters, incredibly all

built before Rome's Arena, shed light on the

past, present, and future of the Colosseum.

The Colosseum undergoes the most

comprehensive facelift of its history

using simple yet revolutionary non-invasive techniques.

Dr. Darius Arya is the Director of the

American Institute for Roman Culture,

and has directed excavations of ancient Rome.

How do you clean the Colosseum?

Well, right now the exterior is being cleaned

with manual labor, elbow grease.

But the main factor that's applied is water.

Not chemicals, but just water with a nebulizer.

And that ultimately is gonna loosen up and remove

the pollution that's secreted on the surface.

Then you're brushing it out.

Then you see what kind of consolidation you need to do.

Are there chips and cracks?

Yes, there are, you fill them in.

So ultimately then it's a bigger study, a larger study

on the effects of time on the Colosseum.

The water should not be sprayed on the Colosseum,

but rather nebulized.

The mist that is created produces a concentrated humidity,

that lasts over time, for approximately four hours,

allowing the layers of dirt to slide down.

In the sections that have been through

the arduous cleaning process,

experts are finding amazing architectural details

that shed new light on how the Romans used the Colosseum.

For the first time, thanks to the scaffolding,

restorers can see up close the halls

where bronze shields were fixed, as well as traces of the

plinths of the marble statues that decorated the facade.

Another interesting element emerged on the

second and third floors, where we found traces of the places

where the statues were that decorated the whole facade.

The delicate and prudent cleaning revealed this rubric.

These traces of red were applied in the space

inside the numbers sculpted on every arch.

The visitors had access to the 80 archways.

Each one had a card to enter, entry was free.

Two thousand years ago, Romans entered through these

very same arches to watch the gladiatorial games.

Federica Guidi is an archaeologist and expert

on the life of the gladiator in Ancient Rome

where the emperors had perfected the best way

to pacify their public.

The Romans loved the games whether they were rich or poor

and the proof that they loved them so much.

They were passionate about them and that it was more than

just a spectacle is that the games spread,

not only the gladiatorial games but games in general

throughout the entire Roman Empire.

But the origins of this popular Roman tradition

reached back much farther in the annals of history

all the way to the great Greek epic, The Iliad.

It is Homer, whoever he was, who for the first time

tells us about a series of funeral games

that the Greek warriors held to honor

one of their fallen comrades, Patroclus.

The champions engage in combat, boxing, and races.

But at the first blood or sign of supremacy of one

over the other, the fight or the competition stops.

We would see that in Italy, things would be different.

Giorgio Franchetti operates a school of gladiators in Rome

and is considered an expert in the ancient games.

In 264 BC, in a Rome that was at the height of its empire

in great territorial, commercial, and military expansion,

Titus Livy and Valerius Maximus, the great Roman historians,

tell us that the funeral of an important politician,

Julius Pera, was celebrated in the cattle market.

And his children decided to honor his funeral pyre

by having three couples of gladiators fight.

And this was the first evidence

of gladiatorial combat in Rome.

Gladiatorial combat to the death

increased in popularity exponentially.

Every time a great Roman died, more and more elaborate

funeral rites, games, and spectacles were organized.

As the games became more important and became an event

that the public followed and looked forward to,

the organization became more and more expensive.

Also because it became an important investment for all those

who wanted to embark on a political career,

they were a good electoral campaign investment.

The organizers of these grand shows were called lanistas

and they rented their services for the most elaborate events

which were wildly popular with the Roman public

and a prime political opportunity.

In 46 BC, Julius Caesar to inaugurate his Forum,

Caser's Forum, employed 320 gladiatorial pairs

though, obviously, there is no funeral to celebrate.

And by now they had completely forgotten about

the sacred funerary aspects of this ritual.

The greater the enthusiasm for this blood-thirsty

spectacle, the more need there was to create

adequate urban spaces for such games.

Rome did not yet have a place for permanent games

and constantly had to erect costly wooden seating.

It was not possible in the late republican period

to keep the structures for public entertainment standing.

They had to be dismantled and there was a reason,

because they could be places of assembly of many people

and therefore dangerous.

Though the thriving cities of Capua and Pompeii

already had permanent arenas,

senators and councils in Rome were hesitant to allow

too many gladiators in the city at once.

Caesar himself at a certain point, Julius Caesar,

had 5,000 gladiators and they told him,

"You can't keep them in Rome." so he moved them to Capua,

to the training grounds of Capua.

But Capua is very close to Rome.

This is the ancient Etruscan city of Capua,

second only to Rome and Carthage in strategic importance

at the time and connected directly to Rome with the most

important military highway called the Via Appia.

Here for the first time, the two semi-circles of a theater

were built facing each other around

the central sand-covered stage.

In Latin, "arena" means sand.

Ida Gennarelli is the director of the archeological site

that houses the remains of Italy's most ancient

amphitheater, the second largest after the Colosseum.

The Campania Amphitheater of Capua was built by

the veterans colony of Capua in the 1st Century AD.

It has an enormous arena, 164 by 144.

And it is built on three layers.

These arches are made of travertine.

And there is an attic with windows.

For thousands of spectators

to all be able to see the show,

they had to be seated around it and upwards

as in a football stadium of today.

It was an enormous feat of engineering at the time.

The construction techniques of the Romans are well known.

They built everything.

Aqueducts, amphitheaters, roads,

so they were great engineers.

And, obviously, they put all their professionalism

into the amphitheater.

Thanks as well to the slaves they had at their disposal.

So you have to imagine the thousands of people

that were required to build this huge amphitheater.

Capua was also the first permanent arena

built of bricks, mortar, and stone

with richly decorated interiors and seating,

setting the style of Roman arenas for centuries.

While Capua's arena is the oldest

and is no longer used for entertainment,

the amphitheater of Verona, far to the north of Italy,

is an example of an arena that still functions

as a place of entertainment.

It is a very large structure that held up to

30,000 spectators, that staged great events

both gladiator against gladiator,

but mostly gladiator against animal,

either ferocious or exotic.

The peaceful period after the rise of the Emperor Augustus

saw great expansion and new colonies.

And with them, the spread of gladiatorial games in arenas

by now the hallmark of the Roman Empire.

These epigraphs tell the stories of famous Roman gladiators

citing them even by name.

For example, one was called Generous

because he was very brave, and he died after fighting

in many battles here in Verona.

But he died "invictus", without ever having being defeated.

Another was called Pardon because he moved in a way

that was very feline.

When the gladiator lost, there was this sign

on the part of the magistrate or the emperor

and the gladiator would be killed.

There are those who say the thumbs-down sign

that has been cited very few times by the sources,

that it might have been a gesture like this.

Or there are those who say that the thumb went like this

for the sign at the slitting of the throat of the gladiator.

But the fact is that it is the emperor who had the power

to decide the life or death of the defeated gladiator.

And they had their throats slit right there

in front of everybody.

The amphitheater also had entrances

for the different social classes,

as well as separate doors for the winners and losers.

The two entrances of the arena were the two main doors,

the triumphant door that faced the city

where the parades came into the arena,

and the door of the losers, the libitinarian door.

The intermediate corridors where spectators moved

through to their places were called vomitoria,

and they were richly decorated as evidenced

by the original pieces housed in the Capua museum.

There was this illusion that they were all equal.

I could be next to someone who was important.

I could be no one or someone,

all there together rooting for our favorites.

It was a great social equalizer but only apparently

because when the show was over,

everyone went back to being what they were before.

Under the early empire, only certain officers

could organize games at their own expense.

The number of gladiators was limited to 120 per exhibition,

except of course those promoted by the emperor

who could do what he liked.

Every time one of Augustus' successes

needed a surge in popularity,

he took gladiatorial combat to new heights.

The arenas were the venue and they too had to be spectacular

The Colosseum is still standing today.

But centuries of grime have taken their toll.

The painstaking renovation work is revealing the

original color of the Colosseum as it might have looked

to the Romans who 2,000 years ago attended

the first gladiatorial combat here.

This is really the fulcrum of this city

and it continues to be.

And there is a destiny to this place,

to be the place of combat also ideological.

Indeed there is fierce debate over how to regulate

private sponsorship of national heritage sights.

In this case, the most famous monument in the world.

It needed to be restored.

The mayor of Rome called me and asked for help,

and we made ourselves available

and we are very proud to do it.

Two years and several culture ministers

after the initial proposal,

renovation finally got off the ground in 2014

but not without obstacles.

Worries, frustration?

No, displeasure at seeing that sometimes small men

put at risk the reputation of something so important

for the prestige of the country, but not a big deal.

Small men, small problems.

Two thousand years ago, the Emperor Vespasian

set out to build the greatest amphitheater of all time,

a place where enthusiastic crowds were treated to

the gory spectacle of duels to the death,

and the merciless massacre of wild animals.

The massacre was most of all of animals, so much so

that even Cicero in the second half of the 1st Century BC,

complained that in the Orient they were having

trouble finding panthers.

This is the sign of how much the wild animals

were almost going extinct.

But exactly who were the gladiators?

In the beginning, it was prisoners, prisoners of war,

who entertained the Roman public in the arena.

It is not by chance that the first armor gladiators wore

were called Samnite, Gaelic, and Thracian

named after the enemies of Rome.

Each type of gladiator could be recognized in the

amphitheater from afar by their helmet and armor.

This is a typical Thracian helmet.

It is perfectly recognizable by this crest

that ends in an animal head,

unique and special to the Thracian helmet.

They were prisoners of war, criminals.

Some even volunteered.

They were desperate Romans who signed contracts

that were legally binding and of saturation

in hopes of fighting their way out of debt

despite becoming social outcasts.

But they were also famous.

They put their lives at risk in combat.

And in exchange they received ambivalent sentiment,

a feeling of formal disgust, "Oh, my god."

"How disgusting it is to become a gladiator, how horrible."

But in fact we know that gladiators were heroes.

They were looked up to like today's football stars,

like today's celebrities.

So one the one side, they were despised and

disapproved of as men who sold themselves.

On the other hand, there was admiration.

There is this ambivalence that is constant

in the games of the Romans.

The fact is they became slaves even if they were free men.

It was viewed as being wrong.

In fact as soon as they entered as new recruits

and were brought into the training grounds

that would embrace them as new athletes

for a month, three months, five months,

however long they were on the contract for,

the first thing that was done to them, is they were whipped.

In the arena, you are a hero.

In the arena, all eyes are on you.

But outside, you are a slave.

In the end you are someone lowering yourself for money,

and doing something degrading.

Their popularity was undeniable especially it is said

among the high society Roman women who attended the games.

The gladiators were strong, athletic,

and according to legend very desirable.

The women desired them.

They thought they were beautiful.

The high society women from good families

ran away from home for them.

In the training grounds of Pompeii, they found

among all these male skeletons, a skeleton of a woman.

They say she was a rich matron who had paid to come

to see her favorite gladiator, something that was documented.

There are those who say with a smile.

In any case, she died happy.

Roman matrons dumped their husbands and children,

and boarded a ship with a group of itinerant gladiators.

But gladiators were not just male.

Female slaves and prisoners also fought.

The gladiator women weren't allowed to fight

as equals though.

They were made to fight over the lunch hour

with the dwarves and the others

while the spectators waited for the real entertainment,

the real antagonists, the men.

Despite the fame and fortunes some might achieve,

most gladiator's lives were hard and dangerous.

As the gladiators became celebrities,

the men who managed them became rich and powerful.

These manager agents were called lanistas.

Until the time of the Emperor Domition,

they invested in and trained whole gladiatorial teams.

A good lanista, a good manager, is one who knew

how to read the human qualities he had in front of him.

You were skinny and fast, you will be a Retiarius

armed likely with a trident and a net.

You were big and muscular, I will make you a Thracian.

I will turn you into a mammalian, heavily armed

but able to sustain frontal assaults.

The gladiators were assessed, fed a rich diet

and then specially trained,

not always with real arms however.

The scene was far different in front of the Roman public

inside the arena, where gladiators were outfitted

for each type of battle or game.

These are called clematis, these high ones.

But there were other shapes, too.

For example, these that were called ocreas.

So many kinds of swords and shields, all of different sizes

and each to be given to a specific gladiator.

Training involved using wooden swords such as these,

the rudis, because they were considered safe weapons,

they couldn't cause wounds.

And also because, let's not forget,

that these people weren't the crème de la crème,

so leaving them with weapons at their disposal

was not the wisest choice.

The Spartacus Revolt, however, showed just how vulnerable

society could be to these professional mercenaries.

Spartacus was an ex-soldier from the Roman legions

who was condemned to slavery and retained to become

a gladiator here at the gladiator school of Capua.

In 73 BC, he led a slave uprising

against the Roman republic which quickly spread

across the entire South of Italy.

It took two years for the Senate to take the problem

of the rebellious gladiators of Capua seriously

because they tended to underestimate them,

so as not to give them the satisfaction of sending

the best legions against them.

Because it would mean admitting they were stronger

than they should have been, but they were.

The impressive underground labyrinth of the Capua Arena

has only become accessible for viewing recently.

This is where gladiators and animals were kept

before entering the arena.

Trapped doors and elevators allowed scenery and animals

to be lifted onto the wooden stage

which was covered in sand.

Here doctors would stitch up wounded gladiators.

The smell of death infested the tiny corridors.

Canals of water ran underneath

to wash away the blood and waste.

These were the cellars.

This is where they managed the stage machinery

to marvel the public.

Trapped doors, pulleys, and planks, where the beasts,

gladiators, machines, rocks,

everything that could enthrall the Roman public

was brought onto the stage.

However, not all combat was to the death.

It was in the lanista's interest

to keep the gladiators alive as long as possible.

The armor and the components of the equipment

were also studied to balance the offense and the defense,

so that the combat would last as long as possible.

Not just the emperors and magistrates

decided the fate of the gladiators,

but also the lanistas who acted as referees in the games.

Frescos and epigraphs of ancient gladiatorial rites

recall there was often pressure from the public

to spare popular gladiators' lives.

It would be crazy to go and kill a gladiator,

a favorite of the crowds, when the crowd

is asking for the gladiator's life to be spared.

Today, the only form of "fight to the death"

still practiced is the bullfight, a spectacle that

still thrives in Spain and the Spanish-speaking world.

Behind the scenes, the younger toreros prepare

their magnificent clothes called traje de luces

or robes of light, while the more senior matador

prepares mentally to kill the bull.

It is an ancient rite and not without risk,

both for the toreros, the picadors,

and of course the matador.

The killing technique is the gauge of the matador's value,

just as the ancient Romans judged the valor of a gladiator

by his capacity to escape and deliver death.

The arenas of 2,000 years ago guaranteed

a unique form of entertainment,

a magnificent show with complex scenery, exotic animals,

music and often an unforgettable bloodbath.

Rome, however, was the last city to get its own arena,

and building it was a special feat of engineering.

The construction of the Colosseum

was an enormous undertaking.

There were already several large amphitheaters

being built throughout Italy at the time.

But this one had to be the biggest,

this one had to be the best.

Building this mega-arena in the heart of Rome

was more than a triumph of engineering.

It was an astute political ploy on the part

of an ambitious dynasty of emperors who took

the Roman Empire to new heights of power.

Nearly 500 years after the earliest gladiatorial

combats were recorded, Emperor Vespasian,

first of the Flavian Dynasty, had a unique

opportunity to build an arena in the heart of

the empire's capital city.

But also to destroy the memory of his predecessor, Nero.

The city's geography favored his plan.

The Rome of Julius Caesar and Augustus

expanded fast and chaotically.

And in 64 AD, a great fire burned nearly

a quarter of the city to the ground.

Although Nero has been both blamed for the

disaster and accused of infamously fiddling

while Rome burns for being at the theater during the fire,

other reports have him participating in the relief effort,

and actually paying for the reconstruction of the housing.

The history books, the successors aren't very kind,

and so we have a rather stilted image of Nero,

when Nero was a person who modernized the city,

gave it new infrastructure, gave it a new fire code.

After the big fire of Rome in 64,

many areas became available to build on

because the fire had destroyed most of Rome.

So Nero took advantage.

For the first time, urban planning was applied

to the chaotic city with wider streets and brick buildings.

But Nero also carved out a huge area for a new palace,

which extended on to the Appian Hill to the north,

the Palatine Hill to the west,

and the Caelian Hill to the south.

He called it the Domus Aurea, the Golden House.

Between the buildings, stood a massive square pool.

In the enormous entrance to the palace,

he built a huge statue of himself

as a colossus, a giant.

But over time, bit by bit the Domus Aurea

and the grounds around it were all dismantled,

so we have very little to see.

When Nero was deposed, shortly afterwards

the house was abandoned.

And to further destroy any trace of their predecessor,

successive emperors built on top of it.

Roman architects had mastered the art of civil engineering,

with bridges, aqueducts, and roads.

And now a space in the city's heart

became available to build in.

It's done by teams of workmen that are very skilled,

they've done this before.

And this is ultimately something that is lost.

Because we can't build something of this scale by hand.

We do with mechanized means, and cranes, and machines.

This was all done by hand.

This was all done by brute force and physical labor.

And then when you're building your scaffolding,

it's made out of wood,

When you're hoisting up material, it's cranes

that are made of wood with metal pins

and ultimately ropes that are made by hand.

This is how you build the Colosseum.

The Forum stands in a valley beneath the Palatine Hill,

where the Imperial Palace was.

The palace dominated the Circus Maximus,

the main chariot racing stadium and today, the venue for

political rallies, soccer celebrations, and rock concerts.

The Circus Maximus was enormous.

It could accommodate hundreds of thousands

of spectators at a time,

last built in its final phase by the Emperor Trajen,

which is partially excavated.

But it extended for over 500 meters.

Overlooking the Circus Maximus

were the spectacular emperors' palaces

from where they had the best view of the entertainment

and could interact with the Roman public below.

It was a great opportunity to communicate and over time

the emperor always had a palace with a circus,

also (mumbles).

To the west of the palace was Nero's pool,

which was to become the site of the Colosseum.

Vespasian found the coffers of Rome empty

and turned to a shocking expedient to fill them again.

He made Romans pay to use the public urinals.

And he was rather practical so you can imagine for example

when he said, "Let's tax the public lavatories."

So that if you're going to the bathroom,

you got to pay a fee.

This is the kind of practical benefits

that he is all about.

A lot of people don't really agree with that at the time,

but he says, "You know what, you know",

"this is what we have to do,"

"every single penny makes sense."

When his children complained and said,

"My god, dad, no, but why?"

"It's disgraceful."

"But you can't put a tax on urinals, it is scandalous!"

Vespasian took a asistencia, a coin, and threw it at his son

and said, "Non olet!", it doesn't smell.

Nero's artificial lake was the perfect foundation

for Rome's new amphitheater.

And work began in 70 AD to build the arena

the imperial capital deserved

at the foot of Vespasian's residence

and a stone's throw from the Forum.

Before the Colosseum, you have a long history of various

locations in Rome used for gladiatorial spectacles.

The earliest document in use is in the Forum Boarium

of the cattle market in 264 BC.

But ultimately through the republic, it's really in

the Roman Forum itself, that you have the

occasional games held temporarily.

Vespasian understood perfectly that the right time

had come to build something really big.

Think about a work site the size of the Colosseum,

how many jobs it gave, the demolishing of the area,

the recovery of the pool for building,

the building materials transported there.

The stone used to build the Colosseum is travertine,

an ancient type of limestone rock formed

hundreds of thousands of years ago

from the calcium carbonate deposits

of ancient sulphur warm springs.

As the climate changed and the springs dried up,

travertine was left behind.

Its special qualities made it perfect for the

grand monuments of Ancient Rome.

Travertine, geologically, has holes

which are technically called vacuoles.

They are resistant to water, they do not absorb water.

They can hold water like a glass, but the water remains.

This is extraordinary.

Here is the limestone as if we were in a cave

with stalactites and stalagmites.

It helps you understand that the hole is rich

with limestone, so it cannot absorb water.

These quarries in the hills of Tivoli near Rome

have been providing the raw material for buildings

and statues since the very earliest times.

Until very recently, travertine was almost

exclusively quarried in Italy.

Today it is mined worldwide.

But Italy has been perfecting the

extraction process for 2,000 years.

Alessandro Dandini De Sylva works

in Fratelli Pacifici quarries,

one of the largest travertine quarries in Italy.

There are other quarries in the world.

Mexico, China, and Turkey, our biggest competitor

in Europe, but here in Italy we have

the highest capacity for extraction.

And nobody has been able to do it quite as well.

The principle area in Italy is Tivoli, the same

place that the Romans quarried stone for the Colosseum

and the other monuments of Rome more than 2,000 years ago.

Although travertine looks porous, it is also

extremely hard and polishes up to look like marble

although its chemical constitution is more like limestone.

The qualities of this stone are its easy working

characteristics, and strength as a construction material.

It is an extremely solid stone, but at the same time

not very hard to work like for example marble.

We can say with certainty that the surface

of the Colosseum was like this.

The surface was left rough and grainy on purpose.

This was a monument for the public, for spectacles, games,

so the surface had this roughness,

while the monuments made for the emperor

or dedicated to the gods were made of marble,

smooth, shiny, and reflective of the Sun.

But how exactly did the Romans mine and cut the travertine

and then transport the massive blocks of stone

to the Colosseum construction site in the heart of Rome?

The Romans had the quarry near the Hvanna River

which was convenient because they loaded the

travertine blocks onto boats that could be

floated all the way down to Rome.

The first challenge the Roman engineers faced was to

get the building materials to the construction site

which in itself was a massive transport operation.

From the Tiber River, the stone had to be moved

to the heart of the city where at last Vespasian's

grand plan could be put into action.