[149] Flaminio Vacca, Memorie, 72; Marangoni, Memorie dell’ Anfiteatro Flavio, p. 57, quoted by Nibby, Roma nell’ anno MDCCCXXXVIII, parte i., Antica, p. 418.
[150] Bellori, Vita di Domenico Fontana. Roma, nell’ anno MDCCCXXXVIII, &c., parte i., Antica, pp. 414-417. (Le Vite de pittori, &c., Roma, 1728, 4to. p. 93.)
The space enclosed within the outer walls is six acres, and there is an extraordinary difference of climate between the northern and the southern side. Dr. Deakin published a work on the Flora of the Colosseum: he found 423 species of plants, belonging to 253 genera.
Over the door now generally used is a painting of the heavenly Jerusalem and the Crucifixion, of the time of Paul III., A.D. 1534-50, in the style of the older pilgrimage pictures. At the time it was painted the passage appears to have been filled up with earth to such a height as to make the picture a conspicuous object in leaving the building; at present it is quite above the heads of the passers-by, and is seldom noticed or seen.
[151] The interior of the building is still grand in its ruins. This is well shewn in the photograph (No. 1195,) with the cross, and the altar, and the stations erected by the pope about 1750, and destroyed in 1874, in order to excavate the whole of the area. A restoration of the interior according to Canina can also be seen in another photograph (No. 724).
[152] Etudes Statistiques sur Rome, par le Conte P. N. C. de Tournon. Paris, Didot, 1821, 8vo., 4 vols., and deuxième edition, 3 Volumes en 8vo avec atlas, Paris, 1858.
The fine set of drawings made for the French Government at that period are now preserved in the British Museum, and fully bear out what I had stated before I had seen them. They clearly shew that the French excavations were not carried down more than ten feet. The tops of the arches of the lower passage are shewn in the drawings, but these excavations appear to have been stopped by water rising to that height. See Plate [III.]
[153] See No. 1742, and Plate [III.]
[154] Probably the aqueduct which passes there had a hole made in it; the same aqueduct goes on from this side of the building to the south-east end. This occurred again in 1874, and a steam engine had again to be employed. This passage, before it turns, goes in the direction of the castellum aquæ of the time of Alexander Severus, of which there are considerable remains between this point and the Cœlian. The specus of an aqueduct of the same period passes along between the Cœlian and the amphitheatre, near the surface of the ground; a portion of this was visible in 1874.
[155] See Photograph, No. 367.