Not just gladiators, spectator life on display at the Colosseum

A journey to discover the habits of spectators waiting to acclaim their darlings, the gladiators, with the long days spent between pastimes intended for body care, gambling, even to bets and curses against rivals. And then a look at the lost and found objects also among the waste that illustrates these habits, showing fashions and everyday life: hair pins, combs and combs, needles sewing, spools for thread, toothpicks for hygiene staff, but also dice, pawns for board games and the small coins typical of the late empire, lead tablets for the curses. And above all the perfect machine of the show: the technology of elevators to make the protagonists on the arena, the animals engaged in the hunt and in entertainment shows. They are on display in the new museum section in the hypogea of the Flavian Amphitheatre inaugurated by the Archaeological Park of Colosseum which thus completes the overall museographic project of the monument's underground. After the permanent exhibition inaugurated in 2023 in the sector oriental underground, centered on the protagonists of the arena shows, i.e. gladiators, with projection holographic which enhanced the connecting cryptoporticus with the Ludus Magnus, the training gym, and the exhibition of mosaics, stone finds and lamps with gladiatorial themes, the museum story curated by Alfonsina Russo, Federica Rinaldi and Barbara Nazzaro now moves on to the spectators, that is, to the audience of over 50 thousand people who, sitting on the steps of the cavea, he spent whole days attending the shows offered by the Emperor. The new section is part of a larger project of overall redevelopment of the Colosseum which aims to create a museum spread throughout the monument's visitor route with a reorganization of the exhibition that also responds to the need to distribute the historical and in-depth points cultural along the visit route, organizing differently tourist pressure. In this sense, the museum located on the second level will also be subject of a new project: between 2025 and 2026, the stages of the history of the Colosseum will be rethought, strengthening the dialogue between the monument, its architecture and the materials belonging to it, in the different eras of use and reuse. With this in mind, the hypogea have been set up by studying in depth the issues related to the entertainment machine and the public: in In particular, the material is exhibited for the first time archaeological found during archaeological investigations, coordinated by the Park starting from 2022, which involved also the excavation of the hydraulic collector freeing 70 meters of stratigraphy: many artefacts were found inside finds, deposited as waste, animal and plant remains, amphorae, lamps, coins, everyday objects, and there remained. "The importance of renewing the installations and their updating in continuity with research and studies specialists constitutes a priority mission for each museum institution" explains Alfonsina Russo, director of the Colosseum Archaeological Park, underlining the importance of to offer the public "always new perspectives" for visiting the monument.