This tour includes Your private English-speaking Guide for the 3-hour tour - Mercedes with an English-speaking driver available all day long - Private lesson (2h) with a master of gladiatorial fights - Entrance fees
This great shore excursion will start at the port of Civitavecchia where, by Your cruiseship, You will meet your English-speaking driver with his car.
Then, You’ll reach the Roman archaeological area of the Coliseum. There you meet your private English-speaking guide (only for you) for visiting the following stunning monuments: the Trajan’s Forum, Trajan’s Markets, the Forum of Julius Caesar, the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Nerva, and so on.
At the end of the Via dei Fori Imperiali, between the Esquiline, Palatine and Celian Hills, raises one of the greatest wonders of Roman civilization: the Coliseum.
The imposing ruins of this huge monument still makes us understand its ancient magnificence. It was built by Jewish prisoners. Its true name is the Flavian Amphitheatre, though it was called the Coliseum, because of its incredible size and also because it was close to the Colossus of Nero. The Coliseum is definitely a part of Roman history and it has become the symbol of the Eternal City and its life. The guided tour ends at the Circus Maximus.
After that, You’ll leave the guide and You have a break for a snack. Later, with the same vehicle and driver, You’ll reach the School of the Gladiators, located not very far. There, You can learn so much about the fascinating world of the gladiators: a master (only for You) will teach You the most important rudiments of that ancient art.
In Roman times, gladiators could become very popular, like many modern athletes. Actually gladiator’s social rank was a little better than a slave, but in spite of that even Roman emperors loved to fight in the amphitheatres because in search of adoration. Tradition tells that the emperor Commodus fought more than 1,000 times in the amphitheatres. Gladiators lived in special barracks, where they formed the “familiae gladiatoriae”; there, there were the lodgings and a small arena for training carried out with doctores (coaches). Now in the ancient Pompeii, those barracks are considered the best preserved in the world. The folk and classical cinematography have represented the fighting as something extremely gory and always with a fatal outcome, but the reality must surely be very different, due to the costs incurred to maintain and training of those athletes, and even more for the costs incurred by editors to offer them to the public. It is therefore likely to suppose that their death in the arena was not so frequent, except for those fights called munera sine missione (mission means the sparing of a defeated gladiator’s life), the crowd, that flocked to see their favourite fighters, wanted to admire the skill and athleticism. The mosaics, representing pugnae (fighting), appear often written with the nicknames of the gladiators: this signifies the affection of the public throughout the career of their own champions. The most famous have fought even about forty times in the arena. Their athleticism also did not escape the Roman noblewomen, by earning the nickname of suspiria puellarum. An episode, that clearly sums up the fanaticism of supporters to their idols, is given by the brawl that broke out in a 59. C. in the amphitheatre of Pompeii between local fans and Nocera’s ones. The incident began during a fight among gladiators and it caused deaths and injuries; so, Pompeii stadium was banned for 10 years.
