Arena di Lucentia

The real thing: Roman amphitheatres

Arena di Lucentia is our nod to the Roman amphitheatre, and above all to the one in Verona that still fills up for opera every summer.

The Romans built amphitheatres across their empire for gladiator fights and animal hunts. The Greek word amphi means "on both sides": an amphitheatre is like two half-theatres joined into an oval, so the whole crowd faces the arena floor. The seating bowl is the cavea, and the passages that let thousands of people pour out in minutes are the vomitoria, from the Latin for "to spew forth".

The largest, the Colosseum in Rome, opened in AD 80 and held an estimated 50,000 people. Several smaller ones are still in use. The Arena di Verona, built in the first century AD, has staged an opera festival since 1913, when Verdi's Aida was performed there. The arenas of Nîmes and Arles in France still host concerts and festivals.