The Colosseum and Imperial Forums of Rome are maybe the best testimony of the grandness and the magnificence of the imperial Rome.

The Colosseum of Rome was built in bricks and clad of travertine in a valley among the Palatino, Esquilino and Celio hills after the drainage of a small lake used by Nero for his Domus Aurea.

The building of four floors, with a total height of 48,.50 metres and an extension covering and elliptical area of about 19000 square metres, measures at the main axis 188m and 156m at the minor one. The first floor is 10,50m high with semi-pillars in Doric style; the second floor, higher than the first of about two metres is made by Ionic pillars, the third floor is 11,60m high and has Corinthian pillars while the fourth one is in bricks with small square windows. At this level we also find the necessary holes to support the beams of the velar that, in antiquity, was used to protect the spectators from the burning sun.

The Colosseum of Rome is divided in sectors that could be accessed by stairs and galleries where it was possible to find, during the games, vendors of chickpeas, drinks and cushions. Among the places reserved to the senators and to the members of the Court, was built on the order of August the platform of the Emperor (called "pulvinar"). To the Emperor, in fact, was probably reserved the access through the underground corridor known as Commodo's passage because, how it is explained in a piece of the "Roman History" of Dione Cassio, the emperor Commodo would have sustained a murder attempt in this place, called "a dark corner" of the Colosseum.

The elliptical arena of the Flavio Amphitheatre, which measures along the axis about 77m for 46, was formed by wooden board flooring covered of sand. To gain access to it there were two entrances: the west one, called "Triumphalis Door" through which were coming in gladiators or animals, and the east one called "Libitinensis Door", through which were taken away the bodies without life of fighters (from Labitinia, Goddess of the death).

Under the arena of the Colosseum there were many corridors and rooms used to welcoming the gladiators and the ferocious beasts that could be brought at the centre of the arena thanks to elevator carriages and access ramps. Along the edges of the paved arena there was an arcade with two orders from which we have the remains while around the amphitheatre there was a paving with marks in marble on which was anchored the velarium. Outside the building we can note the inscriptions remembering the consolidation works of the amphitheatre and above all the prohibition of Benedetto XIV, Pope from 1675 to 1758 A.D., to proceed to further spoliations of the monument.

About the beauty and the magnificence of the Imperial Forums, only consider that in the 1st century A.D. Rome was already a city of more than one million inhabitants and every imperator develops the complex of the forums for effective requirements of the citizens, but also to affirm the own grandeur and the one of the family it belongs to.

Even though, in definitive, the area of the Imperial Forums of Rome is the result of various successive plans, it remains possible to distinguish nowadays some strongly characteristic areas:

• Forum of August
• Forum of Cesare
• Forum of Nerva
• Forum of Peace
• Traiano Forum
• Markets of Traiano