Award winning classicist, Mary Beard with Keith Hopkins, tell the story of Rome's greatest arena

The Colosseum was Imperial Rome's monument to warfare. Like a cathedral of death it towered over the city and invited its citizens, 50,000 at a time, to watch murderous gladiatorial games. It is now visited by two million visitors a year (Hitler was among them). Award winning classicist, Mary Beard with Keith Hopkins, tell the story of Rome's greatest arena: how it was built; the gladiatorial and other games that were held there; the training of the gladiators; the audiences who revelled in the games, the emperors who staged them and the critics. And the strange after story - the Colosseum has been fort, store, church, and glue factory.

"Brilliant ... arguably the best so far in Profile's excellent Wonders of the World series ... it brings the Colosseum to life in all its gory splendour." - Geographical

"A work of scholarship written with the general reader in mind ... a pleasure to read." - Spectator

"What the authors have given us in the proverbial multum in parvo" - Sunday Telegraph

"Revels in the accretions of detail and myth ... first-class scholarship and an engagingly demotic style" - Independent