SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
For the first time in nearly 2,000 years, visitors to Rome's Colosseum can now walk through a passageway once hidden and reserved for emperors. NPR's Ruth Sherlock takes us there.
UNIDENTIFIED COLOSSEUM OFFICIAL: (Speaking Italian).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Italian).
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: We enter the Colosseum and reach the special box once reserved for Rome's emperors. From here, they had a prime view of the gladiator battles that unfolded in this grand amphitheater. To one side is a small gate with steps down to an underground passageway never visited before by the public, not even during Roman times, says Barbara Nazzaro, the director of architecture at the Colosseum.
BARBARA NAZZARO: What we see from today is a wonderful passage that was for the emperors, so something very, very exclusive.
SHERLOCK: The Colosseum draws millions of visitors from across the world each year, and now small groups of no more than eight people at a time can go down inside this tunnel.
NAZZARO: It's a very narrow place, very delicate. There are beautiful stuccos very close to everybody's hands.
SHERLOCK: Angelica Pujia, chief of restoration at the Colosseum, explains how it might have originally looked.
ANGELICA PUJIA: There was a marble veneering on the wall, a marble decoration. And the ceiling was decorated with painted plasters.
SHERLOCK: The decorations are somewhat faded now, but Pujia describes them as depicting jugglers, athletes and fights with wild animals who were captured on a mass scale for entertainment.
PUJIA: Because of the combats in amphitheaters, North African wild animals were - almost disappeared. The inauguration of the Colosseum lasted 100 days. And according to ancient sources, something like 5,000 wild animals were killed just for that inauguration.
SHERLOCK: This passageway didn't exist during that inauguration when the Colosseum was first built in 80 A.D. Pujia says it was added between the first and second century A.D. by digging through the Colosseum's foundations.
Why do you think this was built? I mean, you said they had to bore through these 12 meters of concrete. There must have been a serious motivation for doing this.
PUJIA: So there are two motivations, two reasons that we can take in consideration.
SHERLOCK: One was glory, for emperors to surprise and delight their public by emerging suddenly inside the Colosseum. And the other reason - safety.
PUJIA: Emperors were always risking their lives, so this was a way probably to let the emperor reach the imperial box.
SHERLOCK: Only about 180 feet of the tunnel has been excavated, but Pujia says, emperors used the tunnel to reach the Colosseum without ever having to come into contact with the public, moving secretly underneath Rome's streets.
Though even this didn't guarantee safety. This tunnel has been named after Commodus, the emperor immortalized in the Hollywood film "The Gladiator" as a villainous leader who murdered his father. Historical chronicles say Emperor Commodus may have survived an assassination attempt in this very tunnel.
PUJIA: According to this ancient source, we know that the gallery was named after him.
SHERLOCK: The mystery that remains, says Barbara Nazzaro, the chief architect, is where in Rome the tunnel into the Colosseum comes from. Much of it is still blocked with earth.
NAZZARO: One day, maybe we will continue to dig the other part of the passage that we don't know where it goes.
SHERLOCK: For now though, the public can walk the restored section, a rare glimpse into the life of a Roman emperor. Ruth Sherlock NPR News, the Colosseum, Rome.
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