Roman Empire Essay Example for Free

Roman Empire Essay The Romans created urban centers that looked and functioned much like our urban centers do today. Pick an example of an actual coliseum, arena, or civic center in your area. Describe its style and function as if it were a Roman building in a Roman city. The term arena, signifying the place of combat, is derived from arena or harena, the sand sprinkled on the fighting field to soak up blood and facilitate cleaning. I would compare our local coliseum to the Roman urban center, it is named Hampton Coliseum and it has held numerous events such as the urban center. The Hampton Coliseum is basically the center of the city of Hampton such as an urban center in a Roman city. The Hampton Coliseum is arena like and the size of a football field. The Hampton Coliseum had its ground breaking on May 24, 1968. There were 96 exterior triangular shaped concrete wall panels poured, each weighing approximately 26 tons. Each panel was pelted with stones to give a speckled appearance. Also cast on the site were 700 concrete bleacher sections, weighing from one to three tons each. In all, 17,000 cubic yards of concrete were used for the structure, including 300 cubic yards for the arena floor alone. The floor contains nearly 10 miles of coolant coil for freezing the ice rink. The floor of the arena is almost the size of a football field. I have included pictures of the coliseum to show the comparison to a Roman building. This is the inside of the Hampton Coliseum. This is the outside of the Hampton Coliseum. As you can see in the pictures the structure is very similar to a Roman building as far as the rectangular shape of the entrance and triangular walls in a circular pattern so that the seats could be constructed on the upper floors and balconies of the surrounding buildings and erect barriers at the entry points on ground level. If you look at the Hampton Coliseum and a Roman building like the one below, you can see how much they are alike.