Colosseum

This vast elliptical amphitheatre was completed around 80 AD under the emperors Vespasian and Titus, and once held tens of thousands of spectators for gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, and staged spectacles. Its travertine arcades, arranged in tiers of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, still dominate the eastern edge of the Roman Forum. Visitors walk the surviving stands and peer into the exposed hypogeum, the underground network of cells and lifts that once fed the arena floor.