The Colosseum After the Gladiators: From Blood and Sand to Sanctuary and Stone
- Anna Avis
- Oct 15
- 8 min read
Imagine standing in the Colosseum sometime in the 5th century AD. The once-roaring crowd is gone, the arena lies silent, and the great wooden floor has rotted away. The marble seats are chipped, ivy creeps through the arches, and stray dogs wander where emperors once sat.
For centuries, this vast amphitheatre had been the beating heart of Roman entertainment. Completed around 80 AD under Emperor Titus, the Flavian Amphitheatre, better known as the Colosseum, hosted gladiatorial battles, animal hunts, public executions, and lavish spectacles that celebrated imperial might.
But when the Roman Empire began to crumble, so too did the need for blood-soaked pageantry. By the early 5th century, the gladiatorial games were banned. The Colosseum, once a symbol of Rome’s power, began its long descent into decay.
Yet the story of the Colosseum did not end when the swords were sheathed. It entered a new life, one filled with unexpected roles, unlikely residents, and centuries of reinvention.
The fall of the games and the rise of ruins
As the empire fractured and resources dwindled, maintaining the Colosseum became impossible. Fires, earthquakes, and neglect left the structure scarred. The arena floor collapsed into its underground chambers, the hypogeum, and weeds began to take root among the stones.
By the 6th century, the amphitheatre was no longer an arena of spectacle but a kind of self-contained village. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that families, traders, and the poor began to build homes and workshops inside its arches. The spaces that once held vendors selling wine and olives during games now sheltered blacksmiths, bakers, and cobblers.
The Colosseum became a living ruin, an urban shelter for those left behind in a shrinking city.
A refuge for the outcasts
Among the most striking chapters of the Colosseum’s later history is its use as a refuge for some of Rome’s most marginalised people, including former sex workers and impoverished women.
After the fall of the Western Empire, Rome’s population plummeted. By the early medieval period, much of the city was in ruins. The Colosseum’s enormous interior offered both cover and anonymity, qualities that made it a haven for those society had pushed aside.
Church records and later papal documents suggest that women who had left prostitution found shelter there. Some were placed under the supervision of religious orders, as part of broader efforts to reform or redeem them through work and prayer.
By the 14th century, the idea of transforming ancient ruins into moral or charitable spaces was common. Pope Sixtus V, a reform-minded pontiff who ruled from 1585 to 1590, famously proposed turning the Colosseum into a wool factory staffed by reformed prostitutes, widows, and poor women.
The plan was part of a larger vision to moralise and rebuild the decaying city, offering structure and dignity to those who had been cast out. The project never fully materialised, but the symbolic idea endured: the Colosseum as a house of repentance, a place where sin was exchanged for salvation.
Life among the arches
Documents from the Archivio Capitolino, Rome’s city archives, confirm that by the late Middle Ages parts of the Colosseum were leased as housing. The tenants were a mix of artisans, labourers, clergy, and women described as living “in enclosure,” a term often used for those in religious penance or under moral supervision.
Imagine life there: smoke curling up from makeshift hearths, laundry lines stretching across the arches, and the sound of children echoing through ancient corridors.
The amphitheatre that once saw lions roar and gladiators bleed now rang with the clatter of pots, the hum of weaving looms, and the quiet rhythm of survival.
This transformation was not just practical. It was profoundly symbolic. A monument once dedicated to cruelty and lust became a shelter for compassion, labour, and redemption.
Fortress of the Frangipani
By the 12th century, the Colosseum’s strategic value caught the eye of Rome’s feuding noble families. The Frangipani, one of the city’s most powerful dynasties, seized control of the structure and turned it into a fortress.
They walled off entrances, fortified the arches, and added towers. From their base inside the amphitheatre, they could control key routes between the Lateran and the Palatine. The Colosseum became not a ruin but a citadel, its arches transformed into battlements.
Rival families, including the Annibaldi, fought over it for decades. The echoes of battle replaced the cheers of the crowd.
A quarry for popes and palaces
The Renaissance brought a different kind of destruction. Rome’s builders saw in the Colosseum not a monument, but a convenient stockpile of marble and travertine.
From the 14th to 18th centuries, it was plundered as a quarry. Thousands of tons of stone were stripped away to build churches, palaces, and even parts of St Peter’s Basilica.
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V authorised the removal of materials for his own building projects. Later, Sixtus V considered levelling the Colosseum entirely to make space for a new urban plan. Thankfully, that too was abandoned.
By the 16th century, travellers described it as half-ruin, half-village, a haunting blend of grandeur and decay.
A Christian symbol of martyrdom
In time, the Church came to see the Colosseum not as a symbol of pagan Rome but as a site of faith and sacrifice.
Although historians debate whether early Christians were actually martyred there, the legend persisted. By the 18th century, the Colosseum had been sanctified as a shrine to Christian martyrs.
Pope Benedict XIV declared it sacred in 1749, dedicating it “to the Passion of Christ and the memory of the martyrs.” He installed the Stations of the Cross and banned further quarrying.
The amphitheatre’s association with penitent women and moral redemption dovetailed perfectly with its new identity as a place of spiritual triumph over sin.
It is poetic to think that the arena once drenched in blood became a space for prayer and forgiveness.
The garden that grew from blood
By the 18th and 19th centuries, nature reclaimed the monument. Botanists were astonished by the diversity of plant life growing among the ruins.
In 1855, English botanist Richard Deakin catalogued more than 400 species in Flora of the Colosseum of Rome, calling it “a living museum of natural history.” The combination of sunlight, humidity, and ancient stone created microclimates perfect for rare flora.
The Colosseum had turned from a place of death into a cradle of life.
The dawn of archaeology
The 19th century marked a turning point. Archaeologists and preservationists began to treat the Colosseum as a historical treasure rather than a quarry.
Pope Pius VII ordered the first major restorations in 1807, adding brick supports to stabilise the outer walls. Excavations revealed the hypogeum, the labyrinth of tunnels and cages beneath the arena floor, offering the first real glimpse into the structure’s complex design.
As Italy unified in the 1870s, the Colosseum became a national symbol. It was no longer merely a ruin, but a unifying emblem of Italian heritage and endurance.
Mussolini’s monument
In the 20th century, the Colosseum was again politicised. Benito Mussolini saw it as a powerful symbol of fascist Italy’s link to ancient Rome. He cleared surrounding medieval buildings and built the Via dei Fori Imperiali, the grand boulevard that still runs beside it.
Mass rallies, propaganda marches, and parades passed within sight of the amphitheatre, the old Roman symbol rebranded as an emblem of modern nationalism.
A symbol of life over death
Since the year 2000, the Colosseum has taken on a new global role as a symbol against the death penalty. The initiative, organised by the Community of Sant’Egidio in partnership with the City of Rome, was launched as part of the “Cities for Life – Cities Against the Death Penalty” campaign.
Whenever a death sentence is commuted, a country abolishes capital punishment, or the United Nations or other international bodies take action toward ending executions, the Colosseum is illuminated at night with soft golden light. The gesture is not nightly, but reserved for significant human rights milestones.
For example, the monument has been lit to celebrate the abolition of the death penalty in Turkey (2002), to mark the UN’s call for a global moratorium (2007), and to honour the end of capital punishment in Connecticut (2012).
Each year on 30 November, the Colosseum also glows in solidarity with more than 2,000 cities worldwide for Cities for Life Day, commemorating the Grand Duchy of Tuscany’s historic abolition of the death penalty in 1786, the first in modern history.
The Community of Sant’Egidio calls this illumination;
“a reversal of meaning – where death once entertained, today life is defended.”
A living ruin
Today, the Colosseum is a paradox, both ruin and resurrection. Its stones carry the marks of every era, the iron clamp holes from its quarrying days, Christian crosses from its sanctification, and traces of medieval walls from when people lived within it.
Over nearly two millennia, it has been:
An arena for gladiators and beasts
A refuge for the poor and penitent women
A fortress for noble families
A quarry for popes
A shrine for martyrs
A garden for wildflowers
A symbol for nations
The historian Filippo Coarelli summed it up beautifully:
“The Colosseum has never been dead. It has simply been reborn again and again in the image of those who claimed it.”
Looking to the future
In recent years, Italian authorities have invested heavily in restoring and reimagining the Colosseum. Plans are underway to add a retractable wooden floor that will allow visitors to experience the space as ancient spectators once did.
It is a delicate balance, preserving the monument’s sacred and historical weight while allowing it to live again through performance and culture.
In a way, it is just another chapter in the same long story. The Colosseum has always been a mirror of Rome itself: resilient, layered, and endlessly adaptable.
From sin to sanctity
The story of the Colosseum’s use by former sex workers and the poor is more than a footnote. It is a metaphor for the monument’s survival.
Once a symbol of excess and bloodlust, it became a place of repentance and renewal. The same arches that echoed with cheers later rang with prayers. The same corridors that hid animals for slaughter gave shelter to women seeking redemption.
In its transformation from arena to sanctuary, the Colosseum reminds us that even the most brutal spaces can become places of refuge, and that Rome’s greatest gift has always been its ability to turn ruin into rebirth.
“While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand”
In the 18th century, English historian Edward Gibbon quoted an old prophecy:
“While stands the Colosseum, Rome shall stand;When falls the Colosseum, Rome shall fall;And when Rome falls, the world.”
Two thousand years on, the prophecy still feels apt. The Colosseum may have lost its gladiators, but it gained something far greater, immortality through transformation.
Sources
Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Hopkins, Keith and Beard, Mary. The Colosseum. Harvard University Press, 2005.
Dey, Hendrik. The Afterlife of the Roman City. Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Coarelli, Filippo. Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide. University of California Press, 2007.
Deakin, Richard. Flora of the Colosseum of Rome. Groombridge & Sons, 1855.
Vatican Archives, Bullae of Pope Sixtus V (1588–1590).
De Angelis d’Ossat, G. Il Colosseo e il suo restauro. Rome: Quasar, 1973.
Gibbon, Edward. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Penguin Classics, 1994 edition.
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