The Colosseum Underground

If you have ever come to Rome, then you’ve probably visited the Colosseum. Built as a gift to the people in 70 AD by the emperor Vespasian, the Flavian amphitheatre hosted crowds of 65,000 people who flocked here to witness violent gladiator combats and exotic wild animal hunts from bleachers soaring into the Roman sky. Even today, the ruined Colosseum’s magnificent rows of classical arches speak eloquently to the grandeur of the ancient edifice. But unless you have made the journey downwards to the areas hidden beneath the arena floor, you’ve only scratched the surface of this unique testament to the vaunting ambition of ancient Rome.

The dark warren of tunnels and cells that lay beneath the arena floor is perhaps the most atmospheric part of the whole amphitheatre — an absolutely unmissable experience for visitors today. Built a few years after the completion of the rest of the structure, the so-called hypogeum (from the Greek for “underground”) was the extraordinarily complex backstage to antiquity’s bloodiest theatre, a series of rooms and corridors where the extensive preparations required before and during the games were carried out.

As you wander through these silent spaces today, it’s hard to imagine that when the Colosseum’s games were at their peak the hypogeum was a hellish hive of activity. Here, gladiators paced to and fro or sat silently contemplating their fate as they awaited their turn in the arena above. Here too, furious wild animals — driven mad by hunger and confinement — were kept in massive pens before being released to savage condemned criminals and, in turn, to be slain themselves. Lions and elephants from Africa, tigers from Asia and bears from the northern forests roared and growled, creating a deafening, terrifying din.

A series of elevators linked the hypogeum to the arena above, powered by massive capstans turned by slaves in backbreaking labour. One of these mechanisms has been reconstructed based on meticulous archaeological research, offering vivid insight into the ingenious and brutal engineering that made the games possible.

At the top of these elevators were no fewer than 32 trapdoors through which animals could dramatically spring into the arena, taking both the audience and combatants by surprise and sending cascades of sand down into the already stifling hypogeum.

Of course, it wasn’t just the animals that made the journey upwards. On the day of the games, the gladiators themselves made their way from the nearby training school and barracks, the Ludus Magnus, via an underground passage that led directly into the hypogeum. There they were handed their weapons — deadly instruments of their lethal art — and awaited their moment to emerge before tens of thousands of roaring spectators. In the Ludus Magnus, they had trained only with wooden weapons, for fear they might revolt or take their own lives in desperation.

Ancient writers tell of prisoners condemned to die in the arena who went to extraordinary lengths to avoid their fate — Seneca recounts how one German slave choked himself to death with a toilet brush rather than face the Colosseum’s fatal entertainments.

For those who did make it to the hypogeum, the experience must have been terrifying. As the agonised screams of their maimed comrades filtered down from the arena — there were no windows here, only the guttering torchlight glinting off grimy stone walls — who knows what thoughts ran through their minds as they awaited their summons to the sands above?

It was claustrophobic, chaotic, and perilous — a world of gladiators and trainers, slaves, animal handlers, soldiers, and officials. All the props needed to transform the arena into exotic landscapes for the hunts and mythological reenactments were stored here, to be hauled up by yet more slaves at the right moment, like the backstage of some enormous and gruesome theatre.

For those charged with keeping everything running smoothly, it was a nerve-racking existence: even the smallest mistake in timing or stagecraft could result in a fatal “promotion” — a starring role in the next round of executions. Only by exploring these shadowy passageways can you begin to grasp the full complexity of the Colosseum’s spectacles of death, and the astonishing feats of Roman engineering that made them possible.

For visitors today, the hypogeum is a must-see highlight of any Colosseum itinerary — but for the men who lived, worked, and died down here, it was truly a hell on earth.