Roman amphitheatre of Tours

About

The Amphitheatre de Tours is an ancient performance monument located in the historic centre of the city, behind the cathedral. It was built in the first century, when Tours, under the name of Caesarodnum, was the capital of the small town of the Turons. The chosen location, the top of a small hill on the edge of the ancient urbanized area, protects it from the floods, facilitates traffic around it and signals it by far as an ostentatious symbol of the power of the city.

The building is a massive structure with a substantially elliptical shape and its estimated dimensions are 112 × 94 m. Enlarged in the 2nd century (156 × 134 m), it became one of the largest of the entire Roman Empire to the point of being sometimes described as "architectural monster", and in the 21st century its colossal dimensions are not explained by the size of Caesarodunum and the city of the Turons. Transformed into a fortress in the third century, it was integrated into the defensive wall of the Lower Empire, of which it was the structural element, in the first half of the fourth century.

It gradually falls into ruins during the Middle Ages at the same time as houses rely on its structures and the...