The Emperor's Secret Tunnel into the Colosseum
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- čas přidán 6. 06. 2024
- Five tunnels led into the Colosseum. Four were utilitarian passageways, used to convey gladiators, animals, and equipment in and out of the amphitheater's bustling underworld. But the purpose of the fifth tunnel - elaborately decorated, and built later than the rest - is mysterious. Many scholars believe that it was the emperor's secret entrance. This, however, is just one theory...
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For further reading on the tunnels into the Colosseum, see the sources listed on this page:
toldinstone.com/the-secret-tu...
Special thanks to Through Eternity Tours for help with photographs, and to Professor Nathan Elkins for providing additional details about his view of the tunnel's purpose.
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:23 The mysterious tunnel
2:09 Tunnels of the Colosseum
3:20 The fifth tunnel
4:48 The "Cryptoporticus of Commodus"
5:25 An alternative theory
6:52 Conclusion
Thanks for watching!
If you plan to visit the Colosseum, I recommend booking with Through Eternity Tours, a Rome-based company that specializes in custom, in-depth experiences. Save 5% on any private or group tour with the discount code TOLDINSTONE.
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I find you're video's really intresting. I've always liked history, especially classical history. Just want to say thank you. Keep them coming you make them really well. Thanks
@@patrickstevens3870 u ok bro?
Maybe I'll visit it after they repair it, would be nice to watch a show.
There is a secret tunnel that connects Chinese leaders’ residence in Beijing with Hall of the people where the parliament meets. Rumoured to be wide enough for two tanks to run side by side.
My mom is a civil engineering professor in Beijing and her students had to design new subway line that goes around existing tunnel……
I always love how 95% of the content in the videos you make are things I have never heard of or seen before. I always get to learn something new
Even things you thought you knew, he makes a new angle and it’s fascinating
Yes. 🎯🇸🇪
Maybe because you were in the Anglo-Saxon education system ...
@@eszet1648 k
I ordered your book quite awhile ago and was wondering when it would arrive. It turned out my mother found the package and was so intrigued that apparently she’s been reading it for a number of months. She seems to enjoy it, hopefully I will be able to get my copy back soon. Ha
First time I had heard that the 'gods' had seats in the flavian amphitheater not something that they tell you on the average history show, 👍🏻.
Rome is eye opening. The Colosseum is magnificent. I live in London and the history is rich but nothing compares to Rome. I recommend that everyone visits Rome at least once. Practically every street is architecturally stunning.
Are you going to be continuing the Time Traveler's Guide to Ancient Rome series? I still want to know how to make wealthy patrons
I do have plans to continue it, but new video ideas keep getting in the way. Stay tuned...
How is it possible that something so central to the archeology of the modern world has not been explored yet? At least with geophysical methods?
Commodus passage is well known to Italian archaeologists: czcams.com/video/ZlIxY2Zk7Zg/video.html
I hope the English subtitles work
I was going to make the same question.
This guy just makes up he own history no need for the truth lol
Archaeologists are being selfish and not leaving things for future archaeologists to discover.
@@sausageguy1038 your name is sausage guy
I briefly thought this was a re-upload of the recent video about "under" the Colosseum - which would be fine, but the fact this is a new video about another subterranean aspect is even better.
“Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in his job.” (Terry Pratchett)
The drawing at the start, is that a reasonably accurate image of the colosseum and surrounding area? It looks fab!
Thank you for a great video.
This is so true
Very glad you enjoyed the video! That wonderful drawing is indeed more or less accurate, though most reconstructions of the Colossus of Nero portray the statue a little differently.
What an incredible sight this would’ve been. Infinitely more beautiful than the concrete & veneer and steel & glass stumps we build today. I love it when a city really cares about what it looks like.
It's really awesome to see how much your channel has grown......just this year. Good for you man, you've always made good content, hopefully more and more people can start enjoying it!
Gladiator manure is intoxicating! They need to restore a small portion of the Colosseum tunnels and seating with the marble that was there originally.
The Italians don't have money for that
@@SonKunSama unfortunately Italians system will never have money because of the crazy political situation. The sad truth is that Rome is in shambles and recently the city even has wild boars 🐗 happily scavenging in mountain of garbage strewn around. Needless to say the people are exasperated and to add insult it is in the middle of a election for a new major....
@@SonKunSama If Greece came out of their fiscal management issues,so can Italy
@@SonKunSama
For what? Ariana Grande concerts?
Excellent video again.
I enjoyed the full tour of the Colosseum on Monday and it was absolutely brilliant.
The picture you create with your introduction in this video, of the noise, smell, heat etc. was a great description, paints an accurate picture.
This is why I love your channel - every single post reveals something I had no idea existed! I should be flung down the Gemonian Stairs for thinking I was so well versed in Roman history.
Very interesting as always! Love how your videos always tackle stuff I had no idea about. Awesome to see your channel grow. Couldn't happen to a more deserving channel.
Maybe both passage ways were used by the emperors.
That way a common would-be assassin would never really know for sure which door the ruler would be coming through.
I really wish that the archaeologists would explore fully the so-called "tunnel of Commodus" that it was presumably the passage for the emperors that connected the Imperial Palace and the Colosseum. I think it would be very interesting to know more! Thanks again for the very interesting video and looking forward to see your new videos 👍👍
Imagine being so revered you don't need to show your face in town, you just walk to the theatre underground.
Paolo, i lavori di restauro e consolidamento sono partiti nel 2020... czcams.com/video/ZlIxY2Zk7Zg/video.html , dai, piantiamola di dar credito a tutto quello che ci proporne CZcams, ecchecazzo!
@@GiuseppeLeopizzi I wish I was Italian :(
@@UberChargedTrollFace I think being yourself is enough
@@UberChargedTrollFace I AM Italian and so far it hasn't done much for me other than my good looks! Ha. And, I can't even speak Italian. I speak English and German.
Look how fast your channel is growing! Very pleased and happy for you sir
Beautifully written and presented. Thank you!
Yet another excellent, if brief, lesson from a most outstanding instructor. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn from a teacher like yourself. Please keep up the fantastic publications.
Your videos are so amazing. You and Mark Felton are amazing history channels.
Can’t wait for your book to arrive shortly 👍 I really must go back to Italy - Rome and Naples and do the ancient sites properly as opposed to going shopping with my wife when there is so much history is around me I’d rather see and spend time at!
Always delightful to see your new vids, brilliant ! 👍👍
Thanks for another fantastic video. You are quickly becoming the Mark Felton of Roman antiquity.
Felton isn't up to much....he never provides possible alternative possibilities on history.
For example....does it make commonsense that the third most powerful Nazi,Goebbels,was a short dark complexioned runt with a club foot an inherited birth defect.Not prime Aryan masterrace material was he.....?.Or that Himmlers niece married an Israeli post war.There must be an alternative explanation for these oddities....and there is,but outside the scope of this comment.
I just wanted to tell you a funny story concerning the Colosseum. About 2 years ago a group of my close friends and I went to Italy and rented a house in Rome ,facing the Capitoline Hill next to a large police station right on the Forum. near Arch of Janus. I got separated from the group when they went higher up in the Colosseum for almost 2 hours I was frantic , all I had was 300 dollars ,the police at the Col. spoke not a word of English ,so finally I went to the entry booth and gave them a note saying I was Mahlon Jacobson, from New Jersey, and lost my travel companions next thing I heard my name and N.J. resounding through the Colosseum ,less than a minute we were reunited, they all thought it was so funny but it was scary.Now I always will stay with my group. Really enjoy your Italian facts,I will be so glad when it is safe to travel.
Absolutely beautiful introduction. Love this amazing channel!
Amazing! Fascinating content.👍❤️
You always knock it out of the park
Ive got to say your writing is great. Wonderful imagery
Can confirm that. I‘m not a historian, but pretty interested in antiquity and do consider myself to have some education in that topic. With most history content on youtube there‘s not much interesting knowledge for me, it is often very basic. Not with Dr. Ryan. Almost every time I am in awe of the details I have not heard about before!
I find it remarkable that the tunnels remain unexcavated.
I really dig your videos. Besides the excellent info, your voice just already sounds like a professional audio book reading
Great channel! Also Loved your book! Thankful!
SECRET TUNNEL, SECRET TUNNEL, THROUGH THE MOUNTAIN, SECRET SECRET SECRET SECRET TUNNEL, YEAH!
Excellent presentation!!
I'm happy to see you succeed. Congratulations on a successful youtube channel and here's to many more successes going forward. Keep it up with the wonderful History content and I hope to see much more enjoyable books and videos going forward.
Your videos are wonderful, keep it up man.
Fantastic! I've been very curious about the 'tunnel of Commodus' since reading about it in Amanda Claridge's guide, but there's so little info that I could find elsewhere. It has to be the emperor's private access tunnel, surely? The security problem otherwise of the emperor's personal guards having to escort him on foot through the milling and excited crowds outside the amphitheatre into his box around the arena must have been immense. And similarly escorting the emperor out to safety in case the spectators turned nasty?
You'd assume so, but I think Elkins makes some compelling arguments against the idea that it was the emperor's private tunnel. In his recent book, for example, he notes that the tunnel heads toward the Caelian, not the Palatine (as you'd expect if it was the imperial entrance) and that emperors - in any case - liked to make a grand entrance, and could have done so via the main ground-level entryways on the north and south sides of the Colosseum. (A cohort of Praetorians would have handled the security issues.) I think, in short, that we can't say anything definitive until the whole passage is excavated. Let's hope that happens in our lifetimes...
This what quite a few guys like me think so too but of course it will remain an open debate until sometime someone decides to explore it fully....
@@toldinstone a very interesting view you have pointed out! 👍👍
@@toldinstone Why did they fill the passage with dirt (I assume)? Maybe there are beautiful reliefs and frescoes etc to be found. One of the tunnels must have been to bring in the animals and the slaves who were to die, right?
@@mwj5368 As far as I can tell, they filled the tunnel to prevent any risk of collapses or cave-ins. Re-usable materials were stripped before it was filled, but there may be impressive stucco reliefs or mosaics in the buried section. Animals and prisoners were probably brought in through the main north and/or south tunnels.
I subscribed after the last Colosseum video :) this is great
More underground and tunnels and under the earth constructions, please!
Excellent video!!!
You make truly high quality history videos
Superb video, congratulations.
I love your videos. Thank you.
Wow, never knew of this! Thanks yet again.
Your videos are so good dude!
Loving this with a passion😎❤️👍
Thank you for your work
Great stuff. Love it.
Liked this video before I watched it knowing that it’s going to be great
Fascinating, as always🖖🏼
Hi Garrett.
Good video and nice work. Thank you.
I’ve just also found your Podcasts. Are you planning to transfer content over? It’s handy to keep up to date and can only listen to you while driving.
BR. T
I am almost done with your book! It's great. I left an Amazon review. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Also, I'd do a backflip to see a channel collaboration between you and Dr. Miano from the World of Antiquity channel! You two are among the best history educators I have ever come across. 🤙🏻
Great video! thank you.
Very enjoyable thank you
It's a bolt-hole.
Any competent head of Imperial Security would want a secret exit from the Colosseum, in case the crowd (or the gladiators, or even the guards) became uncontrollable. Many palaces and state residences have these - the White House has at least one, going to (and through) the Treasury building, and the Vatican has the Passetto di Borgo.
Avatar fans will read that title differently.
SECRETTTT TUNNNEEEEL 🎶
@@solssun Oh, yeah, SING IT! 🥰
The song was in my head as soon as I read the title. I came here to put this post if no one had yet.
@@tjacree6910 too little too late loser
Mentally challenged kids who can’t stop talking about cartoons
Thank you once more :)
Another great episode, Garrett. I especially appreciate that you avoid doing what so many do when exploring Roman sites - which is to make the mistake of speaking of it as a fixed entity that didn't change over the course of it's 400+ year history in use.
Thank you. As a tourist who stared at the Colosseum, 30+ years ago, it is amazing all that I missed or was ignorant of. Thank you for informative videos of Rome.
Ah, the same for me! I was there November, 1969, and although I tried my best to see it and thoroughly remember it, I know I missed a lot! We walked around Rome for 3 days.
We were young, 20, and walked our feet off, thinking when we departed that we had done a good job of seeing everything. Many years later, I see we just barely scratched the surface, no pun intended. I know I'll never get to go back. Too old now. But at least I can continue exploring Rome through videos such as this one.
Great video....
Thanks. Just great info. ❤🎯🇸🇪
Elkins argument is compelling. The Emperors spent lavishly on the games in an effort to bolster their popularity and legacies. In essence, the Colosseum was a lavish stage in which the Emperor could be physically seen by the public at large and his munificence personally displayed. If you want to make a splash at a party you paid for, you don’t sneak in through the basement, you come in with great fanfare through the front door.
i would love your thoughts on spartacus
I have to ask you, where do you get the stunning paintings that you use as your thumbnails? So many of them are amazing! I am definitely curious about this one in particular, it looks like a painting of the colloseum from a very different point of view?
I scour the public domain (Wikimedia Commons is especially helpful) to find good thumbnails. The one I used as the thumbnail, painted by Hubert Robert around 1790, shows a team of treasure hunters digging into the outer passageway on the Colosseum's north side.
@@toldinstone Thanks so much for your reply! Love your videos. I loved this thumbnail, I might actually try to get a good quality version and frame it!
Very interesting never knew any of this
You had me at "secret tunnel"
This commentary is good at prompting further questions, like wtf Italy?
That is a great theory and probably right. It makes sense to think of the spectacles on the Colosseum floor as more in the realm of Judicial proceedings with Roman gods present and entertainment as secondary . You may even consider the space below the floor as a temporary prison for criminals in addition to animal storage.
Excellent, excellent, thank you, Dr. Ryan. I’m probably not the first to ask this, but is there any chance of getting an autographed copy of your book?
My pleasure! If you'd like a signed copy, you should be able to order one from the Barnes & Noble in Orland Park, IL (it might be safest to call them and say explicitly that you're trying to buy one of the autographed copies). I put 10 signed books on the shelves there, and I believe about half of them are left.
@@toldinstone Ordered signed copy today from Orland Park B&N. Gratias tibi!
Fascinating. Any time I hear about secret tunnels I just assume it's meant for escaping.
Thanks!
There is a restaurant right next to where they film the Tonight Show in NYC, there is a small adjoining tunnel that Johnny Carson liked to use to get onto set from that restaurant. Possibly a backstage touring path for wealthy Colosseum patrons?
Great 👍 👌 vid
Random colosseum question. How often was it used? Was it a daily thing? Weekly? Or whenever the emperor was in the mood?Just curious.
Looking forward to get your book in the mail.
Glad to hear it!
Awesome
I watched all of this presentation.
This is like the secret tunnel in the Holiday Inn
Does your book have an audio version?
It does; you'll find it on Audible and other audiobook platforms.
Can you do a video on other archeological mysteries that we still don't have answers for ?!
You’ve done well
Wow 112k subs 👌
@5:00, Commodus gets an uneven characterisation as both "untethered from reality" and as "a gladiator killing beasts with weapons." Any man capable of killing man-killing beasts with weapons is rooted in reality.
The Popes also had a secret passage that connected the Vatican to the fortress of the Castel San Angelo(Hadrian's tomb) and it was used for them to escape from danger.It was famously used by the pope in the early 16th century when the Imperial army of the Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain Charles V attacked and sacked Rome.The largely German and Spanish troops did far more damage on that occasion than any of the barbarian sackings of earlier times!
Although it is commonly referred to it as a ‘secret passage’, I have to think Passetto di Borgo was hardly a secret to the inhabitants of Rome. It’s 800 meters long, has narrow windows along its length, and would have been at roughly rooftop level to most of the structures in the old Borgo. It was also roofed over at various times during its long history.
"remains unexplored" aiight I'll go down the spooky dark tunnel myself.
I read they were opening the tunnels to tourists. Does this mean the tunnels have been further explored? Any new information? Or did they just open up already known passageways?
Speaking of tunnels, how about a video on the grotta di Cocceio?
I mention it in my "4 Roman Treasures Destroyed during World War II" video. I was hoping to make a standalone video on the tunnel when I was in Naples, but unfortunately I couldn't get any good footage.
I found this channel. I will never leave this channel. With that being said, " I might have to eat every effen chicken in this place. "
Man I just left Roma and you upload this?!!! That's just my luck...
Probably not your area of expertise but I’ll ask nevertheless: can you maybe make a video about Sumerian society, about the history of all their dynasties and the following emergence of Babylon? Especially the details of their cities, religious beliefs and daily life. This time in history catches my curiosity even more so than Roman, Ancient Greek or the long history of Ancient Egypt. probably because we know less about the everyday life and the composition and complexity of their society (well, if we go back far enough in Roman, Greek or Egyptian it too becomes less clear how exactly their society operated).
More mysteries for you to solve: First, the Colosseum was built on the location of the lake or pond located in Nero's Domus Aurea. We know the ground was marshy and we know that there was an Augustan Era version of Domitian's Meta Sudans up the hill. It is possible that Nero's lake or pond was filled by stopping the flow of water to the Meta (which had in any case been damaged in the Great Fire of 64. But failing that, how was the lake or pond filled with water and possibly lined with stone or cement. The Colosseum was begun under Vespasian and completed under Titus. How was the lake or pond emptied and the ground made stable enough to support the weight of the Colosseum. Following that, how were the understructures added in Domitian's reign, after Titus' death in the early 80s?
Thank you very much hope you respond..
Interesting
I think it makes sense for the Emperor's to have a secret passage but why would it be so heavily decorated? Even for an Emperor.
It's nice to hear a historian without an English accent.
Kool.
Excellent👍
@@bossk2857 bot
@@bossk2857 They didn't mean you ya goober
Philologist, author Santiago Posteguillo features the tunnel in his historical novel based on the early reign of the great emperor Trajan.
Hey my name is Bradley, I love your channel and have been watching every video!!!! Can you please do a video of Marcus Pontius Pilatus, I would love that and also could you do a video on the truth about Jesus.. and separate truth from fiction… I’m just really Curious
What’s the painting in the thumbnail?:)
That's Hubert Robert's "The Colosseum in Rome," now in the Prado
not nee-ads but NYE-ADS!
Secret tunneeeeeeel secret tunneeeeel
*twerks in nomad*
Hmmmn, would be interesting to have some Ground Penetrating Radar to see at least where it goes without digging it up
Wasn't Caligula sent to his "brother and sister gods" by his personal guards in one of the tunnels he used to get into the Coliseum?
If that's accurate, any idea which one it was?
He was assassinated in a cryptoporticus on the Palatine. (The Colosseum hadn't been built yet in his reign.)
@@toldinstone thank you much for that accurate response!
I forgot the timeline!