Ask A Historian

[Clueless Morgan]

Min, what do you know about the building of the colloseum?
Was it used for anything after the "good old days"?

Is that one of the wonders of the ancient world?

My understanding from my ancient architecture classes was that the colloseum, by which I assume you mean the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome:

was sort of "poached" for building materials after the fall of the Roman empire.  People would come to the amphitheater and steal the stone and ironwork to build other things - the current partially ruined state of the amphitheater is in part due simply to its age, in part due to the robbery of its materials, and mostly due to earthquakes that have caused portions of the structure to collapse.

I'm not sure whether or what uses the theaters were put to after "the good old days," but again my understanding was that they slowly lost funding as games died out and the theaters fell into disrepair (which then led to the robbery of building materials, etc.)

And no, the Flavian Amphitheater is NOT one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.  I think only the pyramids of Giza remain from the seven wonders.  The others would be the hanging gardens of Babylon, The Alexandrian lighthouse, the Collosus of Rhodes, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Temple of Artemis, and the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.