What hap­pened to the miss­ing half of the Colos­se­um? It may be a ques­tion about ancient Rome you were afraid to ask in school, as the title of Dr. Gar­ret Ryan’s video above sug­gests. Or maybe, after see­ing the mas­sive ancient ruin’s jagged pro­file all your life on piz­za box­es and soft­ball t‑shirts spon­sored by your local Ital­ian eatery, you nev­er thought much of the Colos­se­um’ shape at all. You could spend hun­dreds of dol­lars and build a LEGO Colos­se­um, hun­dreds more and vis­it it your­self, or dri­ve past it every day on your com­mute, and nev­er think much about it.

Despite cur­rent­ly host­ing more vis­i­tors per year than Tre­vi Foun­tain and the Sis­tine Chapel com­bined, the mon­u­ment to bread and cir­cus impe­r­i­al Rome suf­fered from severe neglect in the mil­len­nia and a‑half after it was used as a glad­i­a­tor are­na – “some 1,500 years of neglect and hap­haz­ard con­struc­tion projects,” Tom Mueller writes at Smith­son­ian, “lay­ered one upon anoth­er.” Used as a quar­ry after the 6th cen­tu­ry, for most of its long, decay­ing life, the amphithe­ater and its “hypogeum” (the intri­cate sys­tem of tun­nels and earth­works under­neath) went ful­ly to seed.

For most of its his­to­ry, that is to say, humans most­ly ignored the Colos­se­um. But curios­i­ty about its his­to­ry pays:

Down through the cen­turies, peo­ple filled the hypogeum with dirt and rub­ble, plant­ed veg­etable gar­dens, stored hay and dumped ani­mal dung. In the amphithe­ater above, the enor­mous vault­ed pas­sages shel­tered cob­blers, black­smiths, priests, glue-mak­ers and mon­ey-chang­ers, not to men­tion a fortress of the Frangi­pane, 12th-cen­tu­ry war­lords. By then, local leg­ends and pil­grim guide­books described the crum­bling ring of the amphitheater’s walls as a for­mer tem­ple to the sun. Necro­mancers went there at night to sum­mon demons.

In the late 16th cen­tu­ry — before popes parad­ed through the are­na to hon­or Chris­tians fed to wild beasts — “Pope Six­tus V, the builder of Renais­sance Rome, tried to trans­form the Colos­se­um into a wool fac­to­ry.” The ven­ture failed, and soon after the huge vari­ety of wild plant life began to attract botanists, who cat­a­logued some 337 dif­fer­ent species. The hypogeum, the archi­tec­tur­al mech­a­nism that once pow­ered spec­ta­cles on the floor above, was only cleared in the 1930s by Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni in his glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of clas­si­cal Rome.

Restora­tion on the Colos­se­um did not begin until the 1990s and vis­i­tors have only been allowed to see the ruin’s inner work­ings since 2011, almost 2000 years since it was first con­struct­ed between 72 and 80 AD. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Fla­vian Amphithe­atre, the build­ing’s name was changed to reflect its prox­im­i­ty to the Colos­sus of Nero, a mon­u­ment to impe­r­i­al hubris that has itself long dis­ap­peared. So, what about that miss­ing half? “The short answer,” writes Dr. Ryan, “is: earth­quakes and popes, in that order.”

The longer answer, as you might imag­ine, is far more col­or­ful, and far blood­i­er, involv­ing events like the Emper­or Tra­jan’s 123-day cel­e­bra­tion of his vic­to­ry in Dacia, “in the course of which 5,000 pairs of glad­i­a­tors fought and 11,000 ani­mals were killed.” After around 500 years of this kind of blood­sport (and oth­er amuse­ments) and anoth­er 1,500 years of dete­ri­o­ra­tion, I’d say the Colos­se­um has held up remark­ably well, a trib­ute to Roman archi­tec­tur­al engi­neer­ing, the one thing the Roman Empire seemed to love more than vio­lent death.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When the Colos­se­um in Rome Became the Home of Hun­dreds of Exot­ic Plant Species

The Roman Colos­se­um Has a Twin in Tunisia: Dis­cov­er the Amphithe­ater of El Jem, One of the Best-Pre­served Roman Ruins in the World

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

An 8‑Minute Ani­mat­ed Flight Over Ancient Rome

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The his­to­ry of Rome is, more or less, the his­to­ry of the mod­ern world. But the Roman world seemed to shrink dur­ing the Neo­clas­si­cal peri­od, an Enlight­en­ment-era move­ment to puri­fy the arts. Where Rome once encom­passed a glob­al empire, it began to inhab­it a nar­row range of ideas, imposed by human­ist schol­ars, French Jacobins, bour­geois rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies in the North Amer­i­can colonies, and the courts of Louis XVI, George III, and Napoleon. Neo­clas­si­cal art was an ennobling arti­fice in a time when Euro­pean empires were swal­low­ing up the globe. (It was lat­er the favored style of Mus­soli­ni and, more recent­ly, Don­ald Trump.) Aca­d­e­mics and states­men rede­fined the cul­tur­al bound­aries of ancient Rome to suit the agen­das of their age.

Elites of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th cen­tu­ry, for exam­ple, believed there was no sep­a­ra­tion between them­selves and ancient Rome. They called them­selves Rūmī, Romans, inher­i­tors of the Empire. West­ern Euro­peans, how­ev­er, exclu­sive­ly used the terms Ottomans or Turks, in rhetoric designed to evoke fears of dan­ger­ous, threat­en­ing oth­ers. Sim­i­lar­ly, the East­ern, or Byzan­tine, Empire, ruled from Con­stan­tino­ple by Con­stan­tine and his suc­ces­sors, nev­er thought of itself as any­thing oth­er than Roman, and cer­tain­ly not as “Byzan­tine,” a word that comes from the city’s ancient name, Byzan­tium.

As the poster of the video above writes, “the empire this video is about was nei­ther called ‘Byzan­tine’ nor ‘East­ern Roman,’ but sim­ply ‘Roman/Romaioi’ but its con­tem­po­raries. ‘Byzan­tine empire’ is a made up term that appeared in the course of the 16th cen­tu­ry.” Orig­i­nal­ly meant to sug­gest the Greek influ­ence on the late Roman Empire, the word became a way of brack­et­ing off the late empire as strange and exot­ic. Then it became a pejo­ra­tive adjec­tive mean­ing “exces­sive­ly com­pli­cat­ed.” Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, this also hap­pened to be the opin­ion of the Neo­clas­si­cists when it came to the late Roman Empire. Neo­clas­si­cal ideals empha­sized order, per­fec­tion, sim­plic­i­ty, virtue, ratio­nal­i­ty, all qual­i­ties retroac­tive­ly applied to the Rome of antiq­ui­ty, but not to the “East­ern” Empire.

Like many a term of abuse, both the Ottoman Empire and Byzan­tine Empire were reclaimed by nation­al­ists who had no desire to iden­ti­fy with ancient Rome. Dur­ing the Crimean War, Greek nation­al­ists embraced the Byzan­tine Empire as a his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty and a vision of a future restora­tion once Istan­bul had been reclaimed. The inhab­i­tants of Con­stan­tino­ple and many of the ter­ri­to­ries under its sway dur­ing the peri­od cov­ered by the ani­mat­ed time­line above, how­ev­er, just called them­selves Romans. “Indeed, the ‘Byzan­tine’ sov­er­eigns,” the video notes, “nev­er ceased to con­sid­er them­selves as the legit­i­mate suc­ces­sors of the Roman empire which had been divid­ed in 395 and whose West­ern part had fall­en in 476.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922)

How the Byzan­tine Empire Rose, Fell, and Cre­at­ed the Glo­ri­ous Hagia Sophia: A His­to­ry in Ten Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

What Did the Roman Emper­ors Look Like?: See Pho­to­re­al­is­tic Por­traits Cre­at­ed with Machine Learn­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness