Stadium of Domitian

Step down from the street, and the air changes. It is cooler here, and quieter. The noise of Rome fades above your head, and the smell turns to damp stone and old brick. Under your feet is ground that the city has slowly buried for almost two thousand years. You are now standing several metres below modern Rome, inside the bones of a Roman stadium.

This is the Stadium of Domitian. Emperor Domitian built it in the late first century, in the 80s, as a gift to the people of Rome. It was not built for chariots or gladiators. It was built for athletics in the Greek style: running, wrestling, boxing, and other contests of the body. For Rome, this was something new. It was the city's first permanent stadium built in stone for this kind of sport.

To understand why this matters, think about Roman taste. Romans loved the chariot races at the Circus Maximus. They crowded into the Colosseum for gladiators and wild beasts. Greek athletics were different. In those games, athletes competed naked, and many traditional Romans saw this as strange and even a little shameful. Domitian admired Greek culture, and he wanted Rome to have games that could stand next to the great festivals of Greece.

So in the 80s he founded a new festival of contests, held in honour of Jupiter, the chief god of Rome. There were athletic events, and there were competitions in music and poetry too. This stadium gave the athletes their stage. The track was long and narrow, with one curved end and one flat end. Rows of seats rose on all sides. Scholars estimate that it held around 30,000 spectators... a very large crowd for a sporting event.

Look around at what survives. You can see the heavy blocks of travertine, a pale limestone from quarries near Tivoli, east of Rome. You can see walls of thin Roman bricks, laid in neat lines. Here and there are the bases of arches and the start of stairways. These stairs once carried thousands of people up into the seating. Today they stop in the air, cut off by the buildings that grew on top of them.

Now for the first surprise. Climb back up to street level and walk south for a minute, and you arrive in Piazza Navona. That long piazza, with its fountains and cafés, has exactly the shape of this stadium. The buildings around the square stand on the old seating. The open square sits where the track once ran. Even the curved end of the piazza follows the curve of the ancient stadium.

The name carries the memory too. Romans called athletic contests by a Greek word, agon. Over the centuries, people described this place as being "in agone", at the games. In local speech this slowly changed to "nagone", and then to "Navona". So when you say the name of Rome's most famous piazza, you are really saying the old word for a sporting contest.

The stadium had a long working life. For a period in the third century, after a fire damaged the Colosseum, games were moved here while repairs were carried out. Later emperors restored the structure. But as the Roman Empire declined, the great building lost its purpose. People took its stone for new walls and houses. Over many centuries, homes, shops, and churches were built into the old arches and over the seats.

There is a story connected with this place that many visitors never hear. According to Christian tradition, a young girl named Agnes was martyred here in the early fourth century, during the persecutions of Christians. Legend has it that she was stripped and exposed in the arches of the stadium, and that her hair grew long to cover her body. This is a pious tale, not documented history. But it shaped the site. The church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, on the piazza above, honours her name.

Here is a second small surprise, and it is about language. The arches under Roman stadiums and theatres were called fornices in Latin. These dark spaces were known as places where prostitutes worked. One popular explanation says the English word "fornication" comes from this Latin word for arch. Whether every detail of that story is true or not, it is a reminder that a stadium was a whole small world, not only a place for sport.

The piazza above kept a playful spirit for centuries. Records describe how, in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, the square was flooded on hot summer weekends. The water turned the old track into a shallow lake. Carriages drove through it, and Romans splashed and celebrated. In a way, the place was still hosting a show for the public, long after the last athlete had gone.

As you walk through these underground rooms, pay attention to the levels. The ancient floor is far below the modern street. This happened slowly, as floods, rubble, and new building raised the ground of Rome over the centuries. Every staircase you climb back to the surface is also a climb through layers of time, from the Roman Empire, through the Middle Ages and the Baroque era, up to the city of today.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment and look at a single block of travertine. Notice its small holes and its warm grey colour. People touched this stone when Domitian ruled. Then go up into the light, walk into Piazza Navona, and trace the long oval with your eyes. You are walking along the line of the old racetrack. The crowd is still here... it just sits at café tables now instead of on stone seats.