Here are a couple of pictures from inside the Collosuem. It is hard to imagine how the Romans could ever have built something so massive using only stone, concrete, and their own muscle. Seating around 50,000, the Colloseum is very comparable to a modern day sports stadium. They even made use of solar shading to reduce glare inside the arena. Built up from Nero's dried lake bed, the structure consists of over 100,000 cubic meters of stone. The open spans in the interior corridors were made possible with the innovation of the arch. The arch transfers it's loads down to the two made supports on both sides and also pushes out slightly. The continuous ellipse of the Colloseum allows the arches on the exterior to brace themselves. After an earthquake brought down a section of the exterior wall many centuries ago, however, the arches started to loose their integrity. They fixed this by installing flying buttresses on the exterior to keep any more arches from blowing out.
Here are a couple of pictures from inside the Collosuem. It is hard to imagine how the Romans could ever have built something so massive using only stone, concrete, and their own muscle. Seating around 50,000, the Colloseum is very comparable to a modern day sports stadium. They even made use of solar shading to reduce glare inside the arena. Built up from Nero's dried lake bed, the structure consists of over 100,000 cubic meters of stone. The open spans in the interior corridors were made possible with the innovation of the arch. The arch transfers it's loads down to the two made supports on both sides and also pushes out slightly. The continuous ellipse of the Colloseum allows the arches on the exterior to brace themselves. After an earthquake brought down a section of the exterior wall many centuries ago, however, the arches started to loose their integrity. They fixed this by installing flying buttresses on the exterior to keep any more arches from blowing out.
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