Why Does The Colosseum Have A New Pavement?

There's a new Coliseum project that is nearing completion, so let's take a look. It's a novel presentation of the broken portion of the Coliseum, the part that is missing. Now, this side of the Coliseum is more legible through the placement of a new pavement around the monument and a new excavation portion that remains on view. Let's take a look at an important restyling of the Coliseum so we can understand more of its history. Hey, this is Darius in the Coliseum. Today we're going to take a look at a new pavement and this new pavement of Travertine Stone is ready for the public. It's really for you to understand that the broken side of the Coliseum was not forever lost. Here you've recuperated some history. Let's explore what's going on around the Coliseum today. This is Darius Aria. Thanks for liking this video and subscribing to my channel for travel and insights into what's new in ancient Rome. You know the Coliseum, and you know that half of its outer wall on the southern side collapsed in the early Middle Ages. The famous date of an earthquake that shook it down is 1349. Although recent excavations suggest some collapse and spoliation began as early as the 6th or 7th centuries. By the 19th century, two important buttresses were installed in 1807 and 1827. But the presentation to the public of the broken side, whose outer wall of Travertine Stone blocks were robbed out during the medieval and renaissance times, was quite confusing. A narrow white band in the black San Pieteno pavement was the only clue or indication of where the missing Coliseum outer wall was once located. This had to change. This new project, begun in 2022, excavated 2,000 square meters of pavement to reveal and document the foundations of the outer wall, the portion that's missing, its drainage channel, and foundations for the massive Travertine piers, then followed by the insertion of a new Travertine pavement to cover the surface area of the missing portion. Let's take a look at the results. All right, it's a beautiful day here and I'm in the new paved section of the Coliseum. So this actually, technically speaking, is inside the Coliseum. You see people sitting on these benches, but basically it's a recreation of the piers of the Coliseum. Here's actually one that's original. And it even has some of the iron pins sealed in with lead. So it's something new in the Coliseum. It gives you a chance to understand the great history of the building. And of course, it's this side that the exterior wall has collapsed. So how do you recreate that for the public? You have the San Pietrini over here. So you're definitely outside the Coliseum. How do you remind people, inform people, that technically speaking, this section here is inside the Coliseum? So what they've done is they left one section behind here excavated. So you can see some of the foundation walls for the piers of the exterior wall of the Coliseum. And over here, you allow the public to enjoy being inside it. But you still have to remind them about those big, massive piers, one of which is preserved and visible. So the new experience of the Coliseum on a beautiful winter day is great because it's interpretive, it's engaging, and it reminds you this is an archaeological site, reminds you of the process of construction. The section behind me hasn't been inaugurated yet, but you have a nice glass barrier here. And we also have some of the original pieces like this block. There are other ones as you make your way around the broken side of the Coliseum that show us the actual inclusion of the construction procedure. And I think for all these millions of tourists that are going to be here, they're going to have an extra treat. So I step down and I'm outside the Coliseum. I can see now this whole new wedge of area that's engaging, that's informative, that's a new part of the experience. And I think you're going to have a much truer understanding then of how magnificent this building was. And a big part of it is its destruction and its loss. And now with this project that's gone back all the way to 2019, is essentially complete. And just take a look at it when you come to the Coliseum because I think you'll enjoy the added experience. So no inauguration just yet, but you can see here the foundations of the Travertine Piers. So this is going to be an open dig site. It's pretty cool because you've got overall informing the public about where the Coliseum actually extended to originally when the site had not collapsed. And then at the same time, you've got an active, what looks like an active dig site, but it's a permanently on display dig site of the foundations. And of course, we're just outside the area where you have the Passageway of Commodus. So there's a lot of history underneath their feet. This is clinging to a lot of that, that lot of infrastructure and foundations and drainage channels. This portion right here is pretty particular because we're outside the area of the Coliseum that's collapsed and we're beyond it to the actual pavement surrounding the Coliseum. Look at this. It's Travertine pavement. And with recent excavations, you actually have preserved on site a number of spoliated columns. So this is an interesting portion, corner of the area of the Coliseum that has been ignored, is neglected. But again, when this entire process, when this reclamation of the area around the collapsed portion of the Coliseum is complete, the walkway will give us much more of this access to this space and understanding that there's just a grand neighborhood and there were impressive piazza areas surrounding the outer portion of the Coliseum. So what you can see from this vantage point is, it's a whole lot of modern Travertine. So the excavation has long since been complete. It was a long project. What they're doing is they're replacing the one-time Sempietini that were all over the place here. And they've replaced it now to recover, let's say, that original width of the Coliseum on this side. It goes all the way around the corner, all the way to the other large bracket that shores up the Coliseum. So the levier in the front, a famous facade. In the back, we have the stern, 1807 and 1827. But now we have a kind of a connective tissue here. And the reason why I'm standing on this block, there's another block right there, is reminding us of those one-time pillars that are still preserved when you go inside the Coliseum. So it's a great way to inform you, create an archaeological site out of it, also to create a space that you can enjoy, I think, and sit down and, you know, have a better understanding of the original dimensions and appearance of the Coliseum on the side that's now broken. So now we are in the southeastern corner of the Coliseum, and we're walking towards that large buttress known as the stern buttress, which is constructed in 1807. You can see a number of the arcades have been filled in to stabilize this broken fragment of the Coliseum still standing. And we're walking our way to the exterior pavement, which is very particular. We have a new metal fence that's surrounding this area, preserving this area. And we have a series of bollards, which we'll spend a little more time talking about in the future. But what we have here is a number of standing bollards of travertine stone, probably used for crowd control. And then beyond it, we see good old Roman road made of Selce, this volcanic stone, for a very large extended piazza area. So we have a distinction then in the makeup of the pavement around the Coliseum, more trafficked, even for wheeled traffic on the far exterior. But as you get closer to the immediate grounds of the Coliseum, we can see that the area is delineated by some kind of crowd control system. We see this in many amphitheaters, these bollards, like in Pozzuoli and Capua. And then you have that area then that would not allow the wheeled traffic, but for the pedestrians to make their way through into the designated arcade that led them to their individual seating section. All right, outside the Coliseum, what do we have here? By the stern wedge, we have bollards. We have Selce. We have the nice big blocks for the roads that we know, like the Via Appia. But then you're getting close to the Coliseum. What happens? We get these bollards that are installed. We have these all over the Roman world for amphitheaters. Pozzuoli, Capua, and so forth. So this is some sort of crowd control area. This is some sort of blockage, probably for wagons and so on. They're checking your ticket. Remember, we've got the Roman numerals over the arches, but look what we have on the pavement. Travertine stone. So it's this travertine stone pavement that we have outside the Coliseum. We have steps leading up into the Coliseum over here. And on the other side of the exterior wall and portion is missing. They've replicated it. They've replicated the step up into the Coliseum. They've replicated the travertine space and the spaces that were once occupied by the massive piers of travertine stone. So you have a lot of information going on here on the other side of the Coliseum where the outer wall is destroyed. This is what we can explore now going around the Coliseum. And we can pick up all the nuances that the archaeologists want us to have when we experience the Coliseum today. We're going to be more informed. We're getting more information also about that portion of the Coliseum that was lost. Hey, thanks a lot for watching me. Thanks for liking this video and subscribing. Don't forget, you can travel with me throughout the Mediterranean. Just go to UnlockedRome.com. And of course, tune in every week. I hope to show you something new and exciting on Rome or something ancient throughout the Mediterranean.