Gladiatorial Pursuits

Chester Amphitheatre Project is a joint intiative between English Heritage and Chester City Council where university students and local volunteers investigated the historic Roman site. Over 35,000 people viewed the excavations from a raised walkway. First International Conference on Amphitheatres to be held in Chester

Members of the public are invited to take part in an international conference that will bring together for the first time experts from around the world to share the latest ideas and studies on all aspects of Roman amphitheatres and the spectacles that took place in them. ‘Roman Amphitheatres and Spectacula: a 21st century perspective’ will be held in Chester, England, on 17 and 18 February, 2007. 

This unique conference, organised by English Heritage and Chester City Council, was prompted by stunning new research and findings made about Britain’s largest uncovered amphitheatre in Chester, results of a 3-year excavation and research project between the two organisations.

Tony Wilmott, English Heritage expert in Roman archaeology and Dan Garner, Chester City Council’s chief archaeologist, will jointly present a paper that will reveal the groundbreaking theory that Chester’s amphitheatre is a two-storeyed stone structure of a grandeur and style similar to the amphitheatre of El Djem in Tunisia (location of the film Gladiator). This and other new findings suggest that Chester had a more important place in the Roman Empire than previously thought.

Other speakers will discuss the discovery of new amphitheatre sites and recent excavation and survey work at amphitheatres both at the frontier and at the centre of the Empire, from Northern Europe through Spain and North Africa. They will examine aspects of the architecture and planning of the buildings, functional, religious and social aspects, the organisation of the spectacles and gladiatorial death and burial. The problems encountered in the preservation and display of amphitheatres as monuments in the modern urban environment will also be touched upon.

A keynote public lecture will be given by Professor Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University on The Arena of Conflict: Facts, Myths and Speculation about Gladiatorial Combat in Ancient Rome on the evening of 16 February. Delegates will be entertained at the conference dinner with ‘gladiatorial entertainment’. For programme and booking details, please visit the conference website at www.emmm.co.uk/amphitheatre/. Deadline for booking is 31st January 2007.