VISIT THE CIRCUS MAXIMUS WITH PERSONAL DRIVER TOUR GUIDE
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 believe it 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.
The footstep was separated from a plinth in stone, called "spina", adorned by statues, obelisks and fountains and was 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 contended the run: Red, White, Green and Blue.
The games of the Circus Maximus started with a procession, the "pompa", similar to the ceremony of the triumph (because of the religious origin of the Games). It departed from the Capitol Hill and it reached the Circus Maximus through the Forum, after that they started the chariots races that followed for the whole day.
You won't believe in your eyes reaching Rome, and you will see personally such a great structure that could contain in Imperial time 385.000 spectators, almost half Rome!!!
Only if you will be able to take a private limousine tour of the ancient Rome you will enjoy and understand how to circus maximus was big and could contain so many spectators.
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