The Colosseum as Symbol: A History of Projections

The actual Colosseum — a first-century entertainment venue — has been constructed in modern cultural imagination as something very different: a sacred space of Christian martyrdom, a theatre of pagan horror, an emblem of imperial greatness, a warning about civilisational decline. None of these images is entirely historically accurate. All are powerful.

The first transformation came in the Middle Ages: the abandoned Colosseum became in Christian narrative the place where martyrs died for their faith — a tradition consolidated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries despite the absence of direct historical evidence that Christians were systematically executed at the Colosseum.

Literature: From the Grand Tour to Romanticism

Byron and Shelley: The Colosseum as Sublime Ruin

The English Romantic poets who visited Rome in the early nineteenth century transformed the Colosseum into an icon of Romantic sublimity. Lord Byron, in Canto IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1818), wrote some of the most quoted lines about the arena:

"Arises on the gaze the Coliseum's wall, / With its imperial shouts of 'He has fallen!' echoed yet."

For Byron, the Colosseum was a warning about the vanity of human power — the place where the mightiest empire in history had crumbled to dust.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, who visited the Colosseum in 1819 with his wife Mary, wrote an unfinished fragment — The Coliseum — in which an elderly blind man and his daughter enter the monument and reflect on the nature of ruin and time. Shelley's Colosseum is a place of philosophical contemplation, not blood.

Henry James and Hawthorne: The Colosseum of Nineteenth-Century Tourism

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his novel The Marble Faun (1860), sets a key scene in the Colosseum at night — one of the commonplaces of Romantic tourism in the nineteenth century. The nocturnal Colosseum, with its shadows and moonlight on the ruins, became the preferred setting for mysterious encounters in Victorian fiction.

Henry James visited Rome several times and left in Daisy Miller (1878) the most famous Colosseum scene in Anglo-Saxon fiction: the protagonist finds Daisy walking through the monument at night, exposing herself to "Roman fever" (malaria). The scene — set in the Colosseum as a place of exotic danger — encapsulates all the ambivalence of nineteenth-century tourism towards Rome.

Cinema: From the Birth of Silent Film to Ridley Scott

The Origins: Cabiria (1914)

Italian silent cinema immediately discovered the spectacular potential of ancient Rome. Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914) — with its monumental reconstruction of Carthage and Punic Rome — established the model of the historical epic that would dominate the genre for a century. The Colosseum is not in Cabiria, but the aesthetic the film established — architectural grandeur as a narrative tool — determined its future cinematic representation.

Ben-Hur (1925 and 1959)

The Colosseum appears in both versions of Ben-Hur. The 1959 version with Charlton Heston remains one of the most watched films in cinema history. The famous chariot race — technically set in a circus, not the Colosseum — is often confused in popular imagination with the Colosseum's arena.

The 1959 Ben-Hur consolidated the image of the Colosseum as a place of spectacular violence opposed to emerging Christian values — a theological-political reading with little historical basis but enormous cultural impact.

Quo Vadis? (1951)

Mervyn LeRoy's film with Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr brought the tradition of Christian martyrdom in the Colosseum to a wide international audience. The scene in which Christians are thrown to lions in the arena — historically doubtful — became one of the most enduring stereotypes about the monument.

Gladiator (2000)

Ridley Scott's film with Russell Crowe is probably the most influential cinematic representation of the Colosseum in the last fifty years. Although historically approximate on many details (the Rome of Marcus Aurelius was very different from the arena in Gladiator), the film had an extraordinary impact on interest in ancient Rome.

The visual effects of Gladiator — which reconstructed an intact Colosseum populated by 50,000 spectators using CGI — established the reference visualisation for an entire subsequent generation. "My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius" became a global meme.

Aside: The Colosseum in Italian Cinema

Italian directors in the post-war period used the Colosseum very differently from Hollywood. Federico Fellini inserts it in La dolce vita (1960) not as a blood-soaked arena but as an ironic backdrop for modern Rome — tourists, lights, scooters. Nanni Moretti in Dear Diary (Caro Diario, 1993) rides past it on a Vespa, making it a site of everyday reflection.

Television and Video Games

Twenty-first-century television series — from Rome (HBO, 2005) to Domina (Sky Atlantic, 2021) — have continued to use the Colosseum as a narrative location. Rome in particular, with its attention to Roman everyday life, offered a more nuanced representation of the arena than the cinematic epics.

In video games, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (2010) made the Renaissance Colosseum fully explorable in every detail — and introduced a generation of players to the monument's architecture.

Contemporary Literature

The Colosseum continues to fascinate contemporary storytellers. Donna Tartt visits it briefly in The Goldfinch (2013). Italian travel literature — from Tiziano Scarpa to Erri De Luca — returns a more everyday, meditative Colosseum than the Northern European and American fantasies.

Visiting It After Imagining It

The Colosseum you saw in Gladiator, Ben-Hur or read about in Byron does not fully match the real thing — and that gap is the most interesting moment to explore. Arrive with your NCC driver and discover the difference. Service from €49. → Book your driver at myromedriver.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Were Christians really martyred at the Colosseum? The historical tradition is uncertain. Ancient sources do not confirm systematic executions of Christians at the Colosseum as a specific site. The Vatican has however officially recognised the monument as a place of martyrdom, and Via Crucis processions are still held there.

Is the film Gladiator historically accurate? On many points, no. Marcus Aurelius did not die at Commodus's hand; Commodus was not killed in the arena; gladiatorial combat was already declining in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The film does accurately reflect some general gladiatorial practices.

What book is recommended for understanding ancient Rome before visiting? Imperium by Robert Harris (fiction) for a narrative introduction; SPQR by Mary Beard for the definitive modern critical history of ancient Rome.

Was the Ben-Hur scene filmed at the real Colosseum? No. The 1959 chariot race was filmed on a set built at Cinecittà studios in Rome — one of the largest sets ever constructed. There is no circus inside the Colosseum; chariot racing took place at the Circus Maximus.

What other films use the Colosseum as a location? Roman Holiday (1953) with Audrey Hepburn, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), and many subsequent productions use it as a recognisable backdrop for Roman scenes.

Article No. 15 — TIER S — MON-01 Colosseum Type: HISTORY Words: ~2,400

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