Roman Amphitheater

The Roman amphitheater , which is today buried about three feet , was built outside the walls in the first or second century AD

 

Amphitheater , the center of the show, then born out of the Roman city , is now the center of city life and the symbol of Lucca : a unique elliptical -shaped square , theater of the existence of Lucca , locked in an embrace of medieval houses and , despite the passage of thousands of years , still alive and witnessed countless changes .

When it was created , for shows and gladiatorial games , the amphitheater of Lucca was an imposing structure , which had fifty-four arches and an auditorium that can accommodate ten thousand spectators. Its construction began in the first century A.D. with the Emperor Claudius , and ended in the Flavian period , generously funded by a wealthy citizen , as evidenced by an honorary inscription found during excavations in 1800.

 

It was in the nineteenth century that a Lucchese architect Lorenzo pallets , revalued the ancient space making the amphitheater an essential framework for the urban structure of the city: the buildings were dismantled over the centuries had crowded into the space of ' arena and the new amphitheater encircled by the ancient structure .

The city gained so a new elliptical space , incorporating the same perimeter and the same volumes of the old building and was dedicated to the city market (in fact it was called " Market Square " ), while the anfiteatrooriginario maintained its facilities to more than two meters below the road surface , giving the original arches and vaults resurfaced at shops that looked out over the square.

Some of the Roman ruins are still visible along via the Amphitheatre , in buildings that now surround the square and the lowest of the four arches through which they are accessed, the only one left of the ancient structure .