Colosseum, Roman Forum and Palatine and Domus Celio Underground

The Colosseum, still the largest amphitheater in the world today, was commissioned by the emperor Titus Flavius ​​Vespasian who chose the area between the Palatine, Esquiline, and Celio hills, previously occupied by the artificial lake of Nero's Domus Aurea, to build it. Its construction began in 70 AD. and ended in 80 A.D. under the empire of Titus, son of Vespasian. The Colosseum is 189 meters long, 156 meters wide over 48 meters high, and extends over ​​24,000 square meters. It could accommodate about 50,000 spectators who sat in the cavea, formed by brick tiers covered in marble. The arena was a large wooden board covered with sand, 76 meters long and 46 meters wide.Together with the Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill, the Colosseum is part of the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo.

Formerly a swampy area, only from the end of the seventh century BC with the reclamation of the valley, the Roman Forum slowly began to become the centre of public life for over a millennium. Over the centuries, the various monuments were built: at first, the buildings for political, religious and commercial activities, then the civil basilicas where judicial activities took place, during the second century BC.At the end of the Republican age, the ancient Roman Forum had become insufficient to perform the function of the administrative and representative centre of the city. The various dynasties of emperors added only prestigious monuments: the Temple of Vespasian and Titus, the Temple of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, dedicated to the memory of the deified emperors, and the monumental Arch of Septimius Severus, built in 203 AD. at the western end of the square, to celebrate the emperor's victories over the Parti.

n the Aeneid, Virgil tells of the amazing adventure of the Greeks who, having immigrated from Arcadia under the guidance of the Minor Deity Evander and his son Pallas, are lead to settle on one of the seven hills of Rome, the Palatine.

According to Roman mythology, the Palatine was the birth-place of Romulus and Remus, the twin brothers suckled and raised by the she-wolf who were to become the founders of Rome. Shrouded in legend and steeped in history, the Palatine Hill is a place of enchantment.

the extraordinary archaeological complex that contains over four centuries of history and testifies the passage and coexistence between paganism and Christianity. The site represents one of the most beautiful places in underground Rome, thanks to the extraordinary state of conservation of the rooms and its great artistic value and religious relevance. These are twenty splendidly frescoed hypogeal rooms, dated between the 1st and 4th centuries, originally shops and warehouses of an insula - a labouring class multi-storey building - transformed over the centuries: from a domus on two levels on the lower floor, equipped with a private thermal plant (balneum), of the beginning of the 2nd century AD, to an insula, with shops (taberne) at ground level and houses on the upper floors, of the beginning of the 3rd century AD; from a new, luxurious domus of the late 3rd and early 4th centuries AD, to the titulus of the middle of the 4th century AD.