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Everybody knows the Colosseum. And everyone 
knows that this part of the Colosseum…looks

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a lot better than this part. So what happened? 
How and why did half of the greatest Roman

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amphitheater vanish? Sounds like a job for…
Questions about Ancient Greece and Rome

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(you were afraid to ask in school). As 
usual, I’m Dr. Garrett Ryan. And today,

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I’ll be talking about the history of the 
Colosseum during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

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For almost 500 years, the Colosseum was 
the Roman Empire’s most impressive arena.

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Emperor and emperor sponsored spectacles 
to astonish and delight the Roman people.

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Exotic animals from the farthest reaches 
of world were hunted with gilded spears.

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Criminals were devoured by bears 
in elaborate mythological charades.

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The Empire’s greatest gladiators dueled 
on bloodstained sands. And so on.

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Over its half-millennium of use, the Colosseum 
underwent a long series of renovations.

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The most important took place in the early 
third century, when a fire destroyed the

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entire upper deck of seating. It took the 
emperors five years to restore the building,

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and signs of hasty repairs are still visible all 
along the north wall. Later, over the course of

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the fifth century, a series of earthquakes caused 
serious damage that was never fully repaired.

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The spectacles held in the Colosseum 
also changed over the centuries.

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The most impressive spectacles, unsurprisingly, 
were held during the Empire’s salad days.

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To celebrate his victory in Dacia, for example, 
Trajan celebrated a whopping 123 days of games,

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in the course of which 5,000 pairs of gladiators 
fought and 11,000 animals were killed.

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From the early mid-third century onward, 
the quality of the games started to slip.

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The later Roman emperors were poorer and 
more distracted than their predecessors,

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and tended to spend most of their time 
and money far from the city of Rome.

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It also didn’t help that most 
of the more exciting animals

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had been hunted to the point of scarcity, and 
that the price of gladiators was always rising.

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Eventually, the gladiatorial combats stopped 
altogether. According to a later legend,

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a monk leapt down to the arena, and tried to 
stop a gladiator from killing his opponent.

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The enraged spectators then stoned the 
monk to death. Upon learning of this,

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the emperors ended the combats. Or so the 
legend goes. Reality was probably less dramatic.

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Although Christian disapproval was 
one cause of the decline in combats,

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the fact that the emperors were no longer paying 
for them seems to have been equally important.

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Whatever the reason, the last gladiators fought in 
the Colosseum sometime in the early fifth century.

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The beast hunts, however, continued. 
They lasted longer, in fact,

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than the Western Roman Empire itself. The last 
hunts were sponsored by the barbarian kings

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who succeeded the emperors. These kings, however, 
had little interest in the games, not least

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because it was difficult to justify staging 
them for Rome’s steadily shrinking population.

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The final recorded hunts in the 
Colosseum were held in the year 523.

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Within a few centuries, all understanding 
of the Colosseum’s function was lost.

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Some claimed it had been a temple of the Sun, and 
had originally been crowned by a vast golden dome.

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Others thought that it had been a 
temple dedicated to all the gods,

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and that a gigantic statue of Jupiter 
had originally stood in the Arena.

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The strangest legends revolved around the Roman 
poet Virgil, whom medieval legend transformed

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into a great magician. Virgil, it was said, had 
built the Colosseum with the help of his demons,

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and used it as a theater for necromancy.
Part of the confusion derived from the fact

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that the Colosseum was already half-ruined 
at the beginning of the Middle Ages,

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and steadily fell apart over the course of 
the next millennium. Earthquakes were the

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main natural cause. Like any tall masonry 
structure, the Colosseum was susceptible to

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seismic damage. And thanks to a quirk of geology, 
part of the building was especially vulnerable.

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The Colosseum’s massive concrete foundations 
only go down to bedrock on the north side

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of the building. On the south side, the foundation 
rests on waterlogged sediment. This unstable

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subsoil amplified seismic shocks, and gradually 
brought about the collapse of half the building.

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The Colosseum’s greatest enemies, 
however, were the Romans themselves.

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The building’s walls were built of 
a fine limestone called travertine,

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and its seats were made of marble. Both 
stones were attractive to medieval builders.

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Marble and travertine were not 
only easy and attractive to re-use;

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they could also both be burnt in 
kilns to make lime for mortar.

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Pillaging of the Colosseum’s stone began even 
before the final games were staged in the arena,

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and continued on a massive scale 
for more than a thousand years.

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The Colosseum wasn’t just a quarry. For much of 
the Middle Ages, hundreds of people lived in the

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ruinous vaults and passageways. There were houses 
complete with courtyards and little gardens.

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There were shops with wooden awnings 
and storage lofts. There were stables,

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there were churches, and at one point there 
was even a full-blown fortified palace.

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Remarkably, many of the Medieval 
Colosseum’s inhabitants were lime-burners,

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who spent their days tearing apart the 
building in which they were squatting.

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Thanks largely to their efforts, the Colosseum 
became an increasingly inhospitable place to live.

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Finally, in 1349, an earthquake brought down the 
entire south half of the Colosseum’s circuit wall,

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forming a colossal pile of rubble. Over 
the next four centuries, this heap,

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colloquially called the Colosseum’s Thigh, 
built half the churches of Renaissance Rome.

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In 1452, a single busy contractor carried 
off more than 2,500 cartloads of stone

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After all these centuries of earthquakes and 
pillaging, it might seem surprising that anything

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is left of the Colosseum. The reason so much 
remains, remarkably, is that part of the building

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was protected. As mentioned earlier, the north 
side of the Colosseum was always less susceptible

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to earthquake damage. It was kept from being 
pulled apart by scavengers, however, by the popes.

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The north side of the Colosseum happened to face 
the processional route connecting the Lateran

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Palace with the Vatican. The popes seems to have 
deliberately preserved this part of the Colosseum

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as a monumental backdrop for their parades. 
Not that every pope agreed; as late as the

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sixteenth century, Pius V proposed demolishing the 
arena’s remains. But most pontiffs, fortunately,

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insisted on preserving this fragment 
of Rome’s greatest ancient building.

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So, there you have it: we have half a Colosseum 
because earthquakes and the popes spared it.

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If you’d like to learn more about the Colosseum, 
I now offer virtual guided tours exploring the

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building and the Roman games. You can 
visit toldinstone.com to learn more.

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In the meantime, as always, thanks for watching.