Is the Colosseum Arena Floor Worth It?

When researching tickets and tours for the Colosseum, you will have come across an option that grants access to the Colosseum arena floor. Tickets for the arena floor are popular and sell out especially fast, not least because tour agencies wax lyrical about how by accessing the arena floor you’ll “follow in the footsteps of gladiators” and “stand where they once stood”. 

But this is pretty misleading, as the arena floor you can stand on today dates only from the late 1990s 

The Colosseum’s arena was made of wood, which rotted over time. When it collapsed, the substructure beneath was filled with debris, rocks, and sand (the Latin for which “harena” gives us our word arena). For most of the Colosseum’s post-ancient history, it was a wild, green space – more of a scrap heap filled with more than a thousand years of rubble than the gutted skeletal structure you see today – among whose ruins people worked, lived and loitered. 

As Mary Beard and Keith Hopkins wrote in The Colosseum (italics are my own): 

“Gone is the earth that once covered [the centre of the Colosseum], and allowed the Victorian traveller to wander at will. In its place, and only recently installed (for most of the twentieth century, the centre of the Colosseum was a gaping hole), is a small section of the wooden flooring – on the model of what is believed was the Roman original.” (p.15)

It would therefore be more accurate to say that you can stand on the level of the ancient arena floor. Any remaining trace of an arena floor was removed by archaeologists in the 19th century to reveal the hypogeum (better known as the Colosseum Underground), a warren of tunnels where gladiators and animals were held before the blood sports began. 

Reconstruction of the hypogeum and Colosseum arena floor

Looking down into the Colosseum Underground from the arena level

So what happened to the Colosseum’s arena floor? How old—and original—is the structure you see today? And is buying tickets for the Colosseum arena floor worth it?

A Short History of the Colosseum’s Excavation

Before the 18th century, excavations in the Colosseum had been ad hoc. Exploratory trenches had been dug in search of the Colosseum’s original arena floor, but these efforts had to be abandoned when the substructure began to flood. Napoleon’s archaeologists were the first to start systematically uncovering the Colosseum’s subterranean structures (the Colosseum Underground, as we now know it) during the French occupation of Rome between 1811 and 1814. But their efforts were also abandoned before they could reach the bottom due to flooding.

It was only in the 1870s that excavations proper got underway, funded by the newly unified Italian state. In 1874, the archaeologist Pietro Rosa led efforts that reached the bottom of the hypogeum substructure beneath the level of the arena floor. But the hole quickly flooded and would be filled with stagnant water for the next five years. Throughout this time, debate raged between scholars and archaeologists over whether the Colosseum could really have been flooded, given the herculean efforts in draining it they were encountering themselves. 

We have a description from Rodolfo Lanciani, an archaeologist who wrote for the English magazine The Athenaeum, describing the eventual draining of the Colosseum in April 1879:

“The stagnant waters which inundated the substructures of the Coliseum were drained off some days ago amidst loud cheers from the crowd assembled to witness the ceremony… Poor Coliseum! It was no longer recognisable since the upsetting of the arena by Signor Rosa in 1874.”

Until the 1930s, you could still walk over the remaining surface of the arena floor.

Anonymous photograph of the Colosseum during partial floor excavation, dated between 1860–1900. Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Inventory no. RP-F-F01125-83.

Then Mussolini had the rest of the arena floor excavated. Mussolini saw in the Colosseum a monument that would serve as the perfect backdrop to his fascist image of the Roman Empire revived — and he as the emperor reincarnate.

This is why his parade route, the Via dei Fori Imperiali, leads from the Colosseum to Piazza Venezia’s Altar of the Fatherland, intersecting the Roman Forum and forums of the emperors as it does so. 

You can walk this route today and learn all about these imperial forums on our Colosseum Walking Tour.

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But that’s not the part of the arena floor you stand on today (if you’re even able to secure a ticket). Today’s Colosseum arena floor dates from the late 1990s.

Are There Plans to Rebuild the Colosseum’s Arena Floor?

In 2021, plans to construct a retractable arena floor were entrusted to Milan Ingeneria, with completion anticipated in 2023. The plan was certainly ambitious: the arena floor was to be reconstructed using Accoya wood, a modified, highly durable, and sustainable timber. Moveable panels were to be integrated into the design, allowing sections of the floor to rotate and shift, providing flexibility and letting natural light reach the underground chambers. For conservation, 24 mechanical ventilation units were to be installed around the perimeter, capable of refreshing the subterranean air in just 30 minutes. 

The design of this new arena floor was intended to protect the substructure beneath from environmental damage by reducing humidity and collecting rainwater for reuse in the monument’s public facilities. Given the Colosseum’s difficulties with drainage, and historical problems with flooding, you cannot be surprised that such care must be taken in this design.

However, everything concerning this project has since gone. The COVID-19 pandemic surely played a part. So too, presumably, does the unappealing financial prospect of closing even part of a monument that attracted 15 million visitors last year. Yet, as things stand, the only fruits of this €9.3 million investment are digital projections available on this website.

Is Visiting the Arena Floor Worth It? 

In a word, no – at least if you know that the floor is barely a quarter of a century old. 

Tickets for the Colosseum Arena Floor are more expensive and difficult to get hold of, selling out often hours after they go on sale. For visitors determined to see the Colosseum on their own, I always recommend the classic 24-hour Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine Hill ticket (€18 per adult), with a SUPER Site supplement if they want to see the House of Augustus and House of Livia on the Palatine Hill as well. 

For a no-nonsense Colosseum ticket explainer, read this guide

However, by far the best way to visit the Colosseum is through a tour. Carpe Diem Tours offers small-group and semi-private Colosseum tours, both of which include timed entry (skip-the-line) tickets to the Colosseum and a guided tour of the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. 

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All guides are licensed, with backgrounds in art history or archaeology, and are fluent in the stories that will bring these ancient sites to life.