The Circus Maximus: Rome's arena

Once you drive with your guide across the archaeological monuments of Rome, behind the Colosseum there is a big garden that gives us only a pale idea of what it was for the Romans: the biggest stadium in the ancient world.

It will be a good deal to stop with the van on top of one side of the circus maximus and to admire its elliptical shape which guested many centuries ago the chariot races competitions. From the side of the Aventine hill, there is a small parking stop where your mind can travel along the centuries and imagine to be a spectator of that time.

I wish I was not an escort and was there visiting the horses and the jockeys with colored uniforms to push their splendent chariots around this immense arena.

The Colosseum was without doubt the place preferred by the Romans to assist to spectacles of gladiators, naval battles, sacrifices, huntings. It was also an arena whose slopes could contain up to 80.000 spectators in its maximum capacity.
But nevertheless a place exists in which doesn't believeit could be an unbelievable number of people. It is the greatest arena that any country in the world has ever had, with enormous dimensions: the Circus Maximus.

Built in the IV° century before Christ, it was a basin that stood among the Palatine Hill and the Aventine Hill, of lower level in comparison to the road, long 600 meters and wide 240, destined to the chariot races.
The footstep was separated from a plinth in stone, called "spina", adorned by statues, obelisks and fountains andwas surrounded by the slopes, called "cavea", where the imperial loggia also was.

Around the "spina"raced the chariots, hauled by two, four or eight horses, and they had to complete seven complete rounds. To the extremities of the "spina"were two semi-circulars bases, the "metae", and on the "spina" were the "ovaria", formed by seven eggs in stone and seven dolphins in bronze, whose moves pointed out the crossed turns and the remaining ones.The chariots went out of the "carceres" (in the IV° century before Christ in wood then reconstructed in stone in the I° century), situated to the nearest extremity of the Tiber. Four teams contendedthe run: Red, White, Green and Blue.