Reflections regarding Wednesday September 18, 2024 in Rome, Italy

Today we went to the Colosseum. After we woke up, we quickly ate breakfast so that we could make it to our train on time. After riding on the train for a while we got off and switched to a different train. By the time we arrived we were already running late for our tour. We raced through the streets trying to swerve around the masses of people. Once we had finally made it to the entrance of the Colosseum, we looked around but we couldn't find our tour group!

My mom called the tour guide whose name was Mariah, and told her that we couldn't find her. She asked us where we were, and after we told her she said “You're at the wrong entrance!” So we turned around and ran to the other entrance. When we got there we found our tour group and got in line with them. Then we introduced ourselves to the other family in our tour group. They were an Australian couple with a six year old boy named Max.

After everyone introduced themselves we all took some time to look at the outside of the Colosseum. The Colosseum is a huge arena that was built in Roman times. The Romans held important events in the Colosseum like animal hunts, public executions, gladiator fights, and naval battles.

You might be thinking, how did they fight naval battles in the Colosseum?!?!

First they brought a bunch of ships into the Colosseum. Then they filled the entire Colosseum which is three times the size of a football field with water. They filled it by using water from the aqueducts that went through the city. After they did all of that they had to close all 80 entrances to the Colosseum, so that the water did not leak out.

Once all of that was done, the fighters got in the boats and had an epic battle.

Since there were so many important events in the Colosseum a lot of people wanted to watch them, so the designers of the Colosseum had to make it huge. The Colosseum had enough space in the bleachers to hold 87,000 people!!! That's more people than an average football stadium!!!

The Colosseum used to be a huge circular arena that was 157 feet tall, but now if you go to look at it you might notice that the top of one of the halves is broken.

The reason it's broken is because in the thousands of years after the Colosseum was built there were many earthquakes that destroyed that part.

Also after the Roman empire fell, nobody was using the Colosseum. So people started to take resources like iron, marble, and stone from it, for other construction projects. Over thousands of years this caused the Colosseum to crumble and break.

Now back to the story! Where were we? Oh yeah, we were about to walk into the Colosseum. So, we walked in and the view that greeted us was astonishing! The whole Colosseum was spread out in front of us! The floor had been taken off to expose the space underneath which was covered in stone walls that looked like a maze, but were actually used as rooms for the gladiators to get ready for their fights.

Next we went higher up in the Colosseum to where the bleachers were. We walked around the Colosseum bleachers while Mariah, our guide, taught us more about it. After that we played a game where there were two teams, one team was parents and one was kids. Mariah would ask a question and the first team to answer correctly would get a point. The kids won, but I think the parents went easy.

Then Mariah taught us about gladiators and ancient Rome. She also asked us a question that was extra hard. I don't remember the exact question, but it was something like “what was the name of the fish sauce that the Romans used?” And we all had no idea, but then my dad said “Garum!!!” And Mariah said it was correct!! And then she said “nobody has gotten that correct in 7 years!!!”

Then after we walked around for a little longer, we said goodbye to everybody and left the Colosseum. We went to the Roman Forum and looked around for a little while. The Roman Forum is an area near the Colosseum that has a lot of buildings that were important to the Romans. It has government buildings, temples to the Roman gods, and an open air market. But the most famous things there are the Temple of Saturn, and the Arch of Titus which is a huge arch that has carved depictions of the Romans taking the Ark of the Covenant from Israel.

Once we had left the Roman Forum, we were really hungry because we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we went to get Gelato. The gelato place gave us all huge scoops that were probably as big as my brother Matanel's head!! Next we went to get hamburgers that were without a doubt, AMAZING!!! And to top it all off I got a food coma and fell asleep!!!