The amphitheatre of Bleso is a Roman amphitheatre of the second century AD in the centre of Tivoli, beside the Rocca Pia and the Este Stables. It was found in 1948 during work on a road between largo Garibaldi and via dell'Inversata, but the medieval registers of the abbeys of Farfa and Subiaco already spoke of a «Fundum Amphiteatrum».
What to see
Before the amphitheatre the area, outside the Republican walls, was used to make pottery, as the finely made cups found in excavations show. With the spread of gladiatorial games the area was transformed by one M. T. Blesus, after whom the amphitheatre is named, who contributed to its construction with two hundred days of labour and two hundred thousand sesterces. An inscription of AD 184 mentions M. Lurius Lucretianus, who paid for a fight between men and beasts and one between twenty gladiators.
The building exploits the slope of the hill and the embankment created by the excavation, halfway between solid-built amphitheatres and standard ones. It is oval, with a minor axis of fifty metres and a major one of ninety; the seating, supported by half-columns, wedges and a barrel-vaulted corridor, could hold up to two thousand spectators, and the arena measured about sixty-one metres by forty-one. Of the four planned entrances, one of the two secondary ones was never built. The walls are in opus mixtum of tuff and travertine. The amphitheatre was largely destroyed to build the Rocca Pia; later the area was a hunting park of Ippolito d'Este and, in the early seventeenth century, the kitchen garden of Cardinal Bartolomeo Cesi.
Visiting
According to the sources the amphitheatre is not normally open and is used only for concerts, exhibitions, film screenings or historical re-enactments. Dates and arrangements should be checked.
Our editors' tip
During the re-enactments organised by local associations such as Villa Adriana Nostra, gladiatorial fights by teams from different countries are staged in the arena, with a jury of experts naming the winner: it is one of the chances to get inside.
