This page contains occasional contributions and musings with the most recent at the top. It references articles, media or other stuff that comes to notice - new Amphitheatre discoveries and excavations, trip notes and information on sites which I haven’t yet visited.
14th March
Right up in the instep of the ‘boot’ of Italy lies the port city and major Italian Naval base of Taranto, founded as an ancient Greek outpost. Approaching the harbour mouth from the south-east is the Via Anfiteatro, and to the south of it between Via Guiseppe de Cesare and Via Domenico Acclavio there’s a covered market building with the courtyard used as a car park. This apparently sits on top of what remains of the city’s amphitheatre. There is apparently a small section of Roman wall exposed in a corner of the car park. Plans to excavate and present the remains in readiness for the 2026 Mediterranean Games (which Taranto is hosting) will have to get a mighty shift on. Nevertheless it makes it onto my list as site no.252 - for the time being classed as ‘Invisible’.
26th February
Latest research has confirmed amphitheatre sites at Modena and Siponto. The Modena Amphitheatre is lost beneath, but embraced by, the curving streets of Via Canalino and Via Montadora. There is a neat website featuring virtual reconstructions of the Roman City of Mutina and its buildings mutinaromana.it (It helps if you have a bit of Italian or Latin). The second at Siponto was revealed and excavated as part of an Archaeological survey in 2021 which began looking closely at remains of a ‘Medieval’ building in a field with a strangely curved outer wall and fanned divisions inside. The list of sites jumps to 251 and the total for Italy is now a round 100.
17th February
More information has surfaced on the so-called ‘souvenir’ glass flasks depicting Puteoli and the Flavian Amphitheatre. Pictures and text have been added to the Puteoli site visit page.
13th Feb. Adventures in Campania Part V. Third Day (15th January) Avella, Nola, Nocera and Pompeii
Into the mountains east of Naples to the Amphitheatre of Avella, shut up in winter but a venue for Jazz festivals and other things when the weather is warmer - able to sneak in through the fence. On to the, also closed, Amphitheatre of Nola, half of which is visible, then on to the almost completely invisible (but very significant historically) Nocera, with a great end to the day in the form of a sunset visit to an almost deserted Pompeii.
7th Feb. Adventures in Campania (and Lazio) Part IV. Second Day (14th January) Cuma to Capua (Via what lies between)
Day two drove west to Cuma and after some messing around trying to find a way in, visited the pretty Cuma Amphitheatre. It’s within the grounds of a villa operated as a study centre by The Vergilian Society of America - a body dedicated to promoting and supporting study of the classics in general, and the works of ‘Vergil’ (Virgil you fools) in particular. So readers, park any preconceptions about our friends across the Atlantic. Amid the morbid politics, gun worship and other lunacy, there is evidence that a flame of culture still flickers.
Travelling north on the Via Domitiana the next stop was Liturno, a place that felt like a tatty out-of-season seaside resort with a fragment of amphitheatre in the form of a grassy bank. There is much more of historic interest and charm elsewhere in Liturno - the last resting place of Scipio Africanus, including some significant remains of a theatre adjacent to the inlet to Lago di Patria.
Further north to the mouth of the Garagliano and across it into the Lazio region. The settlement of Roman Minturnae has a well preserved theatre and forum, an amazing aqueduct nearby, and an almost invisible amphitheatre site in private gardens to which I was denied access by a grumpy old Italian resident. Ironically, next to his house is a military cemetery which is the resting place of over two thousand allied soldiers who died fighting for his and my freedom in 1944.
Further north and west into the Lazio region around the Gulf of Gaetana to Formia, where Cicero had his villa and was assassinated. Scant remains of an amphitheatre sit in the hillside below the railway station above this breezy seaside resort. Final drive of the day was eastwards before the setting sun, back into Campania with the destination of the stunning World Heritage Site - the Amphitheatre of Capua.
30th Jan. Adventures in Campania Part III. First Day (13th January)Pozzuoli and Napoli (Check below for route detail)
On my first day I drove south to Pozzuoli and stalked my way around the two amphitheatre sites in the centre. After that, a trek eastwards into the centre of old Napoli in search of the lost underground amphitheatre and to visit the legendary Archaeological Museum. Driving around central Naples is fine if you have patience, a small vehicle, and an idea of where you’re going. On-street parking is, like in most Italian cities, unavailable without a fight, rammed or non-existent, but many back streets have small parking garages within buildings where they will valet park and watch your car for a reasonable €4 per hour (be sure to check the price first). Mine was half way up the nearby steep and narrow one-way Vico Sant Aniello a Caponapoli which, even with my limited Italian, clearly translates as something akin to ‘St. Aniello’s Road to the top of Naples’. The site visit blog pages for the three ‘day 1’ sites are now live.
The map extract, part of a reproduction of the ‘Tabula Peutingeriana’ , helpfully, displayed on the wall of the departure lounge at Naples Airport, is a 12th Century copy of a Roman map. The central strip of land represents the middle of the Italian peninsula, and the upper land mass, modern day Croatia. The upper strip of sea is therefore the Adriatic and the lower, the Med. You can clearly see ‘Spalato’ (Split) on the Croatian part with ‘Solana’ (Solin) just above. The botttom land strip represents the coast of North Africa, ‘Leptiminus’ is in present day Tunisia.
The Campania route started at the triple gabled structure ‘Puteolai’ just to the left of ‘Neapoli’ and above the thumb shaped coastal inlet. It followed the coast via ‘Cumae’ ‘Literna’ ‘Menturnus’ and ‘Formus’ , then moved inland to ‘Capuae’ and ‘Nola’, passed behind the mountain range to ‘Abellino’ , down river to ‘Nucerae’ and back to the start via ‘Pompeia’.
19th Jan. Adventures in Campania (12-16 January 2025) Part II. ‘Geology and (S)tuff’
Q. Why is Geology relevant on a webpage about amphitheatres?
A. Because it has had a significant impact on the development and survival of several Campanian arenas (no seismic disruption, no Pompeii).
A geological fault line called the Acerra-Dohm canyon runs beneath the bay of Naples orientated north-east to south-west. It meets the shore equidistant between Mt. Vesuvius and the town of Pozzuoli (Puteoli) which is ringed to the north by half a dozen or so craters of extinct volcanoes. Everywhere in the vicinity has been to some degree shaped by seismic activity. When you first visit Pozzuoli there is a definite smell in the air. Park the idea that it’s down to badly maintained Mediterranean drains and take another sniff. You’ll realise it’s the eggy smell of sulphur that so disgusted you in chemistry lessons at school. An area east of the town centre consists of an expanse of stinky dried mud punctuated by spitting bubbling activity from volcanic vents - ‘Solfatera di Pozzuoli’. This dormant, but not quite extinct volcanic crater was an historic source of ‘medicinal’ sulphur and a popular tourist attraction until 2017. It was closed after an appalling and tragic accident demonstrated it was far from stable, with three visitors losing their lives. When the wind is blowing towards town, it provides the aroma.
Unlike areas founded on sedimentary rock laid down and compressed over millions of years, the uneven and undulating topography of greater Naples owes a lot to its relative ‘youth’ . It’s a bit like a puff pastry - layers of crusty solidified lava flow interspersed with softer, less stable volcanic ‘tuff’. The tuff has in places been mined as building material (used in Roman concrete) or washed out by ground water. Add the occasional earthquake and a few million tons of masonry on top and things occasionally go wrong, such as subsiding buildings and big holes sometimes appearing in the city streets. This can also mean that Roman street levels are a long way below those of the present day. Naples has a network of underground passages, cisterns and caves resulting from quarrying of tuff. These can be visited on guided tours which include a diversion inro the basement of a residential flat to see parts of a ‘lost’ Amphitheatre.
17th Jan 2025 Belated happy new year. I’ve just returned from a trip to Italy. The first part of an introductory ramble explaining what and where is below. Individual pages on Amphitheatres (Some spectacular and some hardly worth the bother) will appear as separate blog pages over the coming weeks.
Adventures in Campania (12-16 January 2025) Part I
Taking an evening flight from London to Naples on a clear day tells you a lot about what’s happening down below. Millions of lights attest to the fact that the wide coastal plain on the Mediterranean is densely populated and overdeveloped with sprawl. What you see on the ground confirms this. Occasional beautiful coastal towns and medieval gems interspersed with endless expanses of tatty yellow and pink apartment blocks and industrial areas, with litter strewn and potholed road junctions. Like most countries, Italy has its contradictions and not all stereotypes tell the full story. Rather like when you meet new British people, you never know what you’re going to get. Some friendly, helpful and interesting, and others braying arrogant, dismissive or downright rude. Negotiating the Napoli Tangentiale in the rush hour reveals how some locals seem to drive like their footballers play - debasing their sublime talent with aggressive shoving, fouling and cheating whilst resorting to impatient petulance and leaning on their horns when things don’t go their way. No surprise then that the supreme exponent of this style, the Argentinian Diego Maradona (Napoli 1984-1991) is revered as an adopted son of Naples, and many walls in and around the city still carry murals worshipping this revered sporting icon (or cheating git if you prefer). The first Italian hero I meet is the guy at the Avis desk who waits until midnight for my delayed flight to arrive in order to hand over the keys to my Fiat 500 and I head west to find my place of rest.
The planned itinerary is Day 1 - Pozzuoli and Napoli. Day 2 - Cuma, Liturnum, Minturno, Formia and Capua. Day 3 - Avella, Nola, Nocera, Pompeii.
29th December 2024
One of those internet 'Top 20’ lists…. ‘Roman Amphitheaters(sic)' on the website architectureofcities.com is worth a look, although I don’t endorse its inclusion of Alexandria (a nice theatre, but not an amphitheatre). Written by a guy called Rob Carney, an Architect based in Boston Mass.
23rd December 2024 - Refurbishing Limoges
The powers that be have announced a refurbishment and presentation of the remains of the Limoges (Augustoritum) amphitheatre dating 2.7 million euros. Apparently the fourth makeover since it was unearthed two hundred years ago. After a couple of years of planning and wrangling over finance, the work will start in August 2025. The Limoges site (No.34 on my list) consists of visible fragments on the south side of the Jardin D’Orsay, a public park/garden on the western edge of the old town centre, under which more remains were reburied after investigative digs. The site is a bit tricky to view on satellite imagery because it’s next to a prison which, for security reasons, is heavily pixellated to reduce the likelihood of successful contraband deliveries by drone or a criminal kingpin being spirited away from the exercise yard in a hijacked helicopter.
3rd December 2024 - Holes in Spain
In the process of checking the Wikimedia Map (The link top right ‘Find an Amphitheatre Near Me’ will take you to it) I’ve found an additional site near Bandirma in Turkey. The entries for Spain include the ten confirmed sites in my list plus the ‘lost’ amphitheatre of Barcelona. In addition there are another eight claimed additional amphitheatre sites in Spain ranging from holes in the ground to unexcavated remains - some even the subject of suitably bitchy disputes between advocates for and against their status. I’ll be going through the available evidence and adding them to the appropriate list/lost register over the coming weeks.
27th November 2024 - Gladiator II
You can find my review of, the new Ridley Scott ‘epic’ on Facebook group Page ‘200 Arenas’ . Visually spectacular as you might expect, but sharks….please!
18th November 2024 - Colosseum
Just picked up on an 8 part ‘mini-series’ entitled Colosseum (2023) from last year which is currently on the BBC Iplayer and elsewhere. It purports to tell the story of the latter stages of the Roman Empire through the prism of the Flavian Amphitheatre. It uses the formulaic ‘docudrama’ mode consisting of sections of re-enactment, interspersed with (cheap to produce) talking head sections, featuring (mostly American) academics ‘Profsplaining’ the context and history to keep you hopefully hanging on until the more expensive bits and the commercial breaks (depending on which service you’re watching.) These can get a bit boring/repetitive and steeped in sound bytes. I’ve only watched episode 1 so far. There are some good aerial shots of Capua and El Djem before they drop in the claim there are 230 amphitheatres surviving, and as we know readers, there are at least 247, possibly 249 at the time of writing. The re-enactments are OK with the expected quotient of fancy dress togas and vaguely homoerotic lingering shots of semi-naked handsome actors grunting/sweating/fighting, as well as some ‘tasteful’ (fake) blood spillage. I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen more but would love to hear your views… Colosseum - Series 1: 1. The Gladiators - BBC iPlayer
27th November 2024 - The Portus Project.
Yesterday the BBC re-showed the 2012 Dan Snow fronted documentary ‘Rome’s Lost Empire (currently still available on BBCIplayer). It features a section on Portus, an area near the mouth of the Tiber, now three kilometres inland and next to Rome Airport, it was the ancient Roman equivalent of the London Docks or Rotterdam. Much of it was behind the fences of an Italian Ducal estate for many years and parts spent time as a zoo/safari park complete with semi-feral baboons, it wasn’t subject to detailed examination until the 1990s when the University of Southampton headed up the Portus Project, led by Simon Keay. The work included the possible discovery of two amphitheatres, of which more later.
Sadly Prof. Keay passed away in 2021 aged 67. Lots of interesting stuff on the website Portusproject.org
There is a really good 2018 lecture by Simon Keay on Youtube entitled “Navigating the harbours and canals of the Portus Romae: new approaches”