Singaporean visit to the Colosseum in Rome
Being in Rome, the first thing we had to do was to visit the Colosseum. To familiarize my kids with what this building was, roughly and for them to be more familiar for the visit including visualizing the arena, I watched the movie Gladiator with my family. My kids loved the movie and after the movie, understood who Gladiators were, where they came from, how they became Gladiators, their place in society and the types of activities that happened in the Colosseum.
Thanks to Giovanni, who guided us on some free parking areas in Rome as well as helping us on identifying roads to avoid to prevent the entry into the ZTL. Read more about my post on driving in Italy. We ended up parking pretty close to the Colosseum at this place. Pretty decent parking with plenty of lots, very few of them were vacant though.
On the way to the Colosseum, we saw a few people who were walking around wearing Gladiator outfits, one of whom took a photo with us and guided us on where the entry to the Colosseum was.
To enter the Colosseum, you have a few options.
- Purchase the tickets online and skip the queue
- Wait in line to get tickets on the spot (if there are available tickets)
- Hire a guide who will also take you to the place under the Colosseum.
Hiring a guide was a really expensive option that meant we were paying nearly triple the amount we would pay otherwise and hence, we decided to wait in line, which was not very long anyway, and take the tour of the Colosseum ourselves.
In about 15 minutes, we were at the ticket counter and the bulk of the time was actually for security checks. A good thing if you ask me J. Anyway, at the ticket counter, we learnt of an English tour that would be starting in about 1 hr at 2pm and so we decided to take this instead as this tour was much cheaper than the one offered by the guides outside. However, this tour did not include the extra visit of the area under the arena which was sold out for the day. To kill the time we just went around the area on the first floor and had a quick glimpse of the Colosseum and took some photos.
The tour was really good and the guide explained that the Colosseum was more than just an arena for games but also a hang out point with small stalls around and places for people to chill out and mingle. I guess this is probably the beginnings of the mall concept. The games itself as well, were explained to us in more details including the 3 types of games that were held there.
- Criminal persecutions
- Games with animals
- Gladiator games (including re-enactments)
The guide also gave us insights into the structure, which is actually called the Flavian Amphitheatre, the huge statue outside it that gave it its name of the Colosseum and its history of construction, upgrades and its decay by both humans and nature.
The whole tour took about 1.5 hours and the guide was super. We ended our tour at the top where we had a good view of the old Roman city and given some tips on imagining how life was in the past through explanations of the areas around the Colosseum.
All in all, this was a good day out and I truly think you must come to the Colosseum with your kids and let them experience Rome and its glory.
Mustansir has also written his post on the Colosseum and you can read it here: The Colosseum
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