Back Home
Search

All Results

Generic filters
Search in excerpt
  • About
      • About Smarthistory
      • Press coverage
      • Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees
      • Major donors
      • Smarthistory partners
      • Content editors and contributors
      • Recommended by…
      • A Smarthistory timeline
      • Contribute an essay to Smarthistory
      • Contact Us
      • Support our work
      • We believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background.

        Smarthistory unlocks the expertise of hundreds of scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other publisher.
  • Histories of Art
      • Prehistoric
        • Overview of Prehistoric
          • Paleolithic
          • Neolithic
      • Africa
        • Overview of Africa
            • East Africa
            • West Africa
            • North Africa
            • Southern Africa
            • Central Africa
      • Americas
        • Overview of Americas to 1900
            • North America to 1500
            • North America 1500 – 1900
            • South America to 1500
            • South America 1500 – 1900
      • Asia
        • Overview of Asia
            • Hinduism and Buddhism
            • China
            • Japan
            • Korea
            • South Asia
            • Afghanistan
            • Southeast Asia
            • The Himalayas
      • Ancient Mediterranean
        • Overview of Ancient Mediterranean
            • Ancient Near East
            • Egyptian
            • Aegean
            • Greek
            • Nabataean
            • Etruscan
            • Roman
            • Palmyra
      • Medieval Europe & Byzantine
        • Overview of Medieval Europe + Byzantium
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Christianity and art
            • Judaism and art
            • The medieval book
            • Early Christian
            • Byzantine
            • Carolingian
            • Ottonian
            • Romanesque
            • Gothic Art
            • The crusades
      • The Islamic World
        • Overview of the Islamic World
          • Early Period
          • Medieval Period
          • Later period
      • Europe 1300-1800
        • Overview of Europe 1300 – 1800
              • Italy: 14th century
              • Italy: 15th century
              • Italy: 16th century
              • Northern Europe: 15th century
              • Northern Europe: 16th century
              • Spain: 15th and 16th century
              • Reformation and Counter-Reformation
              • Baroque: 17th century
              • Rococo: early to mid 18th century
              • Neoclassicism: late 18th century
              • British: 18th century
      • Europe 1800-1900
        • Overview of Europe: 19th century
            • Romanticism
            • Early Photography
            • Victorian art
            • Realism
            • Second Empire
            • Impressionism
            • Post-Impressionism
            • Symbolism / Art Nouveau
            • The Peredvizhniki
      • Oceania
        • Overview of Oceania
            • Lapita
            • Polynesia
            • Melanesia
            • Micronesia
            • Australia
      • Modernisms 1900-1980
        • Overview of Modernisms 1900 – 1980
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Fauvism + Expressionism
            • Cubism + Early Abstraction
            • Dada + Surrealism
            • German art between the wars
            • Latin American modernism
            • American art to WWII
            • Postwar American art
            • Postwar European art
            • Conceptual + Performance art
            • Post Minimalism
            • Global vanguard
            • Architecture + Design
      • Global cultures 1980 to now
        • Overview of Global Cultures 1980 – now
            • Appropriation and ideological critique
            • Identity and the body
            • Banality and kitsch
            • Ritual, spirituality and transcendence
            • Histories real and imagined
  • Guided learning
      • Start here
          • OVERVIEW
              • Looking at art
              • Approaches to art history
              • Understanding religion in art
              • Understanding museums
              • For the very beginner
              • seeingamericaFeatured | Art that brings U.S. history to life
      • Courses in art history & history
          • OVERVIEW
              • Seeing America – a portal to American history and art
              • ARCHES – At-Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series
              • Short courses – spend an hour — learn a lot!
              • Across cultures – An interconnected world is not as recent as we think.
              • Teaching with images – For K-12 teachers
              • Syllabi / AP & A-level courses
              • Art Appreciation
              • Creating + conserving
      • Smarthistory books
        • Overview – More titles coming soon!
            • AP® Art History (vol. 1) – nos. 1 – 47
            • AP® Art History (vol. 2) – nos. 48-98
            • AP® Art History (vol. 3) – nos. 99 – 152
            • AP® Art History (vol. 4) – nos. 153 – 191
            • AP® Art History (vol. 5) – nos. 192 – 250
            • Ancient Near Eastern art
            • Ancient Egyptian Art
            • Ancient Aegean Art
            • Ancient Greek Art
            • Ancient Etruscan art
            • Ancient Roman art
            • Guide to Italian art in the 1300s
      • Virtual visits – museums & sites
        • Overview – art by location
          • Austria
          • China
          • Egypt
          • France
          • Germany
          • Greece
          • Italy
          • India
          • Japan
          • Mexico
          • Netherlands
          • Peru
          • Russia
          • Spain
          • Turkey
          • United Kingdom
          • United States
  • Commons
  • Support
      • Donate – Help Smarthistory continue to make a difference
      • Contribute an essay – Help make art history relevant and engaging
      • We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free.
Search

ARCHES (at risk cultural heritage education series)

A beginner's guide
ARCHES, an introduction
What is cultural heritage?
Cultural heritage “in crisis”
Blow it up: cultural heritage and film
Whose art? Museums and repatriation
Repatriating artworks
From tomb to museum: the story of the Sarpedon Krater
The many meanings of the Sarpedon Krater
Who owns the Parthenon sculptures?
Plunder, war, Napoleon and the Horses of San Marco
Paikea at the American Museum of Natural History
Nazi looting: Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally
Seizure of Looted Antiquities Illuminates What Museums Want Hidden
Looting, collecting, and exhibiting: the Bubon bronzes
Napoleon's booty — Perugino's (gorgeous) Decemviri Altarpiece
Ruins, reconstruction, and renewal
Destruction, Memory, and Monuments: The Many Lives of the Parthenon
Views of past and present: the Forum Romanum and archaeological context
The Roman Forum: Part 1
The Roman Forum: Part 2
The Roman Forum: Part 3
Rome's layered history — the Castel Sant'Angelo
Looted and revered: The Rosetta Stone
Ruin as abattoir, the Colosseum
Before the fire: Notre Dame, Paris
Conservation as memorial, Mantegna and the Ovetari Chapel
Place and identity
Palmyra: the modern destruction of an ancient city
Ancient Babylon: excavations, restorations and modern tourism
Venice's San Marco, a mosaic of spiritual treasure
Renaissance Synagogues of Venice
Unearthing the Aztec past, the destruction of the Templo Mayor
Bayt Farhi, a Jewish house in Damascus
Unearthing New York's history of slavery
Seneca Village: the lost history of African Americans in New York
Ceremonial belt (Kwakwaka'wakw)
Voyage to the moai of Rapa Nui (Easter Island)
The many forms of iconoclasm
Erased from memory: the Severan Tondo
Rewriting history: damnatio memoriae in ancient Rome
Making and Mutilating Manuscripts of the Shahnama
Folio from a Shahnama, The Bier of Iskandar (Alexander the Great)
The Court of Gayumars
Iconoclasm in the Netherlands in the Sixteenth Century
Submerged, burned, and scattered: celebrating the destruction of objects in South Asia
Creative iconoclasm: a tale of two monasteries
Erasing Art: Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning drawing
Destruction as Preservation: Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn
Destruction, looting, and trafficking
Mesa Verde and the preservation of Ancestral Puebloan heritage
A market for looted antiquities
Save culture – end trafficking
Trafficking the past
We will need Monuments Men for as long as ancient sites remain battlefields
What the bulldozers left behind: reclaiming Sicán’s past
Lost History: the terracotta sculpture of Djenné-Djenno
The Looting of Cambodian Antiquities
Sotheby's Returns Looted 10th Century Statue to Cambodia
The Scourge of Looting: Trafficking Antiquities from Temple to Museum
How a famous Greek bronze ended up in the Vatican
Fact and fiction: The explosion of Reims Cathedral during World War I
Documenting and protecting cultural heritage
Diarna: documenting the places of a vanishing Jewish history
A Landmark Decision: Penn Station, Grand Central, and the architectural heritage of NYC
Frameworks for cultural heritage protection: from ancient writing to modern law
A race against time: manuscripts and digital preservation
Provenance and the Antiquities Market
A Renaissance masterpiece nearly lost in war: Piero della Francesca, The Resurrection
Saving Torcello, an ancient church in the Venetian Lagoon
The role of archaeology
What is archaeology: understanding the archaeological record
Saved by shipwreck, The Antikythera Youth
The rediscovery of Pompeii and the other cities of Vesuvius
The importance of the archaeological findspot: The Lullingstone Busts
When there is no archaeological record: Portrait Bust of a Flavian Woman (Fonseca bust)
Conservation vs. restoration: the Palace at Knossos (Crete)
Cultural heritage endangered round the world
Cultural heritage at risk: Mali
Cultural heritage at risk: Peru
Cultural heritage at risk: Turkey
Cultural heritage at risk: Syria
Cultural heritage at risk: Cambodia
Cultural heritage at risk: United States
Saving Venice
The unintended consequences of UNESCO world heritage listing
What you can do now
What can be done to protect cultural heritage?
Organizations and agencies that work to protect cultural heritage
Backstories: additional endangered objects and sites
ARCHES advisors

Ruin as abattoir, the Colosseum

by Steven Zucker

 

Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater, or Amphitheatrum Flavium), c. 70-80 C.E., Rome, an ARCHES video

Smarthistory images for teaching and learning:
ColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseumColosseum

More Smarthistory images…

Cite this page as: Steven Zucker, "Ruin as abattoir, the Colosseum," in Smarthistory, July 19, 2020, accessed October 27, 2020, https://smarthistory.org/ruin-abattoir-the-colosseum/.

Flickr IconBrowse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning! 

Sign up for our newsletter!

Receive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.

Smarthistory has a new Facebook group

Join us!

We are planning live events for teachers...

Stay up-to-date on new content, and chat with colleagues.

Join now!
Our mission Close

At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other provider.

  • Donate
  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Contact Us
facebook icon
twitter icon
instagram icon
youtube icon
flickr icon
  • About Smarthistory
  • Smarthistory’s blog
  • Contribute an essay
  • Content editors and contributors

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

· © 2020 Smarthistory · Designed by Press Customizr · Powered by ·