Building Rome’s Colosseum | Engineering the Impossible: The Colosseum

[Music]
the solution lay in three key
architectural innovations that form the
secret of Rome’s great monuments the
most important is the arch the arch is
an almost perfect design for bearing
heavy loads and that design is so simple
a series of wedge-shaped blocks is
assembled together in a semicircular
form and supported on top of two pillars
at the side the weight of the building
is absorbed by the Keystone in the
center of the arch and distributed
evenly over the entire span of the arch
and then down into this two-sided
pillars this allows the pillars to bear
enormous blows and because the space in
between the pillars is empty this
reduces the weight of the building even
further the arch would become a
reoccurring theme throughout the
building of the Colosseum on the outer
ring ad gigantic arches 23 feet high
form a giant ring around the perimeter
on top of these is set another 80 arches
on top of these is a third-tier making
240 arches and all the Colosseum really
is nothing but arches it’s a symphony of
arches
[Music]
the organization required to achieve
this feat of engineering was phenomenal
but even here Rome’s engineers had a
trick or two up their togas for them
building was a business of mass
production standardization is key for
the efficient building of the Colosseum
for example the Romans use the arch and
the arch is repeated again and again and
again by countless teams of builders and
that kind of standardization is very
akin to what we have in an
industrialized world today so the
breaking down of the building allows
them to have lots of work gangs with not
huge skills they just have to simply
build enough in this way the thousands
of laborers working on the Colosseum
could be left to build their section
with minimal supervision confident in
the knowledge that their labors were
being repeated all over the structure
you’re gonna have a lot of unskilled
laborers you’re gonna have a lot of
bricklayers you’re gonna have a lot of
people that have some sort of skill but
they’re not going to be required to know
more than a whole lot then you’re gonna
have a lot of skilled laborers the
people that are going to be carving
columns people that are gonna be carving
the statues that are going to go in the
niches in the upper floors so you’re
gonna have a lot of skilled craftsmen
you can have a lot of unskilled people
participating in this very massive and
important construction site just making
sure that each work gang was in the
right place at the right time and doing
the right thing was a challenge in
itself
[Music]