The Colosseum

The Roman colosseum is a marvel of architecture and technology, this amazing piece of history is still standing today. The colosseum was a huge circular building used for mock naval battles (so it was water tight), killing christians, gladiator fights, that sort of thing. This beast of a building was 16 stories high, thats about 144ft tall. the walls were made of concrete, while the outside was covered with decrative plaster and marble. the colosseum had a capacity of 50,000 people. even though it didnt have a roof there was a giant canvas that could be pulled over the top called the velarium. it took about 1,000 men to hoist this thing into position over the colosseum. the colosseum is also filled with statues inside, they stood on niches and were very ornate, painted with glass eyes on some of them. it was built in standard roman sequence, which is the way all buldings were built back then. standard roman sequence is an order in which doric is on the bottom layer, then ionic, and the top would be corinthian. you needed a ticket to enter the colosseum, just like modern time football games or something. it was built over the rule of 3 different emperors, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian.