Roman amphitheatres

A Roman amphitheatre was a large oval or round open-air arena ringed by tiered seating, built for gladiator fights, animal hunts and public executions. The name means “theatre all around”, which is what sets it apart from the semicircular theatre built for plays. About 230 are known across the Roman world; the earliest date from the Republic, and they grew more monumental under the Empire. The seating, the cavea, was divided by social rank, with the best seats nearest the arena, and it rested either on arches built into the structure or directly on a hillside.

The amphitheatres in this atlas show the range of what survives. In Pula the outer wall of the Arena still stands complete, three storeys high on the side facing the sea, and it is one of the best-preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world. In Durrës an arena begun under Trajan lies half-excavated in the middle of the modern city, with an early Christian chapel built into it. At Salona and at the legionary fortress of Burnum only the lower structures remain, the latter a military amphitheatre cut into the bedrock by soldiers of the legion.