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Visits of Rome:
- Visit of Rome's Colosseum
- Visit the Roman Forum
- Visit Rome by night
- Rome shore excursion from Civitavecchia
- Visit Capitol Hill of Rome
- Visit Rome Vatican Museums
- Visit Rome Vatican's Sixtine Chapel
- Visit Rome's Trevi Fountain
- Visit Rome's Piazza Navona
- Visit Rome's Constantine Arch
- Visit Rome's Spanish Steps
- Visit St Peter Basilica in Rome
- Visit Rome's Trajan Forum
- Visit Rome Pantheon
- Visit the Mouth of Truth of Rome
- Visit St Mary above Minerva in Rome
- Private tour or big bus?
- Rome tourist information and advice
- Visit Venice Squares' Vittoriano in Rome
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The Circus Maximus
Once you are with your guide driving 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 preferred place by the Romans to assist to spectacles of gladiators, naval battles, sacrifices, huntings. It was also an arena whose slopes could contain up to 70.000 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.
Built in the sixth century before Christ, it was rebuilt and ampliated under Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus, in the first century BC. It was a basin situated among the Palatine Hill and the Aventine Hill, lower than the road level, long 600 meters and wide 240, destinated to the chariot races.
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" (starting grids for the chariots), situated to the nearest extremity of the Tiber. Four teams contended the run: Red, White, Green and Blue but sometimes the ancient hippodrome saw races with more than ten chariots at the same time.
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 (from the Cataloghi Regionari also called Notitia Urbis Romae - news from the city of Rome -, historical report of the first century AD): 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.