Postcards from Coco

Colosseum, Piazza del Colosseo, 1, 00184 Roma RM, Italy

Artwork by me. IG @felicityfauxpas Contact me for prints.

Dear interested reader,

Will you watch the new Gladiator movie? I will. Having been to the Rome Colosseum around 15 years ago (where has the time gone), it is a film I have to see. I have always loved gladiator movies. I used to watch the 1960s black-and-white versions. Maybe they were in colour, and my TV was black-and-white. Never mind, gladiator films are incredible.

I don't know if this is still the case, but European schoolteachers were allowed to get in for free when I went there. Bingo! Either way, I would still pay to see it. It was magnificent.

The queues around the Colosseum are probably as long today as they were then. I am not keen on queuing, but the atmosphere was very relaxed. Unlike here in the UK, Rome had no queue management. People just stood there without having to be told to move. They did it naturally; when the person in front of them moved, they followed. Not too hard. They used their common sense to step forward. I don’t know why I mentioned this detail, but it is probably because queue management in the UK makes me aggressive. I feel infantilised.

Anyhow, back to beautiful Rome. People chatted, took pictures of the Roman soldiers in revealing uniforms, and were entertained by the street artists and their tricks. We stood quiet for some time, but the weather was lovely, with sunshine and acceptable temperatures

Once we entered the Colosseum, I was not disappointed. It was big. I mean big. And beautiful. When you stand there, you have to think about what used to happen there. Not only did the gladiators have to fight each other, but some were confronted with lions and tigers. The Romans had created a place of hell on earth for those gladiators, all for the entertainment of the people. Sometimes, they filled the Colosseum with water and had ships fight battles. Unbelievable but true. The gladiators, being slaves, had little say in what was happening. They were there for the entertainment of the crowds. Some gladiators became celebrities. They were admired by some of the females in the audience and probably some males, too. The walls inside the Colosseum are proof of that. Some people took their time to carve their admiration for a gladiator in the stones.

Please go and have a look yourself, but don’t be like this British tourist who carved his name into the wall of the ancient arena in 2023. It's not a good look, expensive, and, more importantly, very disrespectful.

Let me know your thoughts on Gladiator II, the Colosseum, or whether you have ever fought a dangerous animal.

Ciao,

Coco xx

#TRAVELWRITING #COLOSSEUM #ROME #FERNWEH #WANDERLUST #POSTCARDSFROMCOCO #COCOWILDE

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