The guesswork ends when you meet Heinz-Jürgen Beste of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome, the leading authority on the hypogeum, the extraordinary, long-neglected ruins beneath the Colosseum floor. The walls and the floor bear numerous slots, grooves and abrasions, obviously made with great care, but for purposes that you can only guess. Weeds grow waist-high between flagstones caper and fig trees sprout from dank walls, which are a patchwork of travertine slabs, tufa blocks and brickwork. The confusion is compounded as you descend a long stairway at the eastern end of the stadium and enter ruins that were hidden beneath a wooden floor during the nearly five centuries the arena was in use, beginning with its inauguration in A.D. The floor of the colosseum, where you might expect to see a smooth ellipse of sand, is instead a bewildering array of masonry walls shaped in concentric rings, whorls and chambers, like a huge thumbprint.
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