Pula Arena, Pula, Istria, Croatia, Europe
The Pula arena (also Pula amphitheater) is the sixth largest of its kind. Its name derives from the Latin ărēna, which indicates the sand that covered the audiences of the Roman amphitheatres. Among the Polesi, the emblematic monument of the city, with a great symbolic and emotional value, is usually called Rena, from the Istroveneto dialect. The amphitheater was built between 2 BC. and on 14 A.D. under the emperor Augustus, taking the material from the known stone quarries located on the outskirts of the city and still existing today. Later, the emperor Vespasian, who had commissioned the Colosseum in Rome, enlarged it (according to legend, he wanted to pay homage to Cenis, a freedwoman of Istrian origin native to Pula, former secretary of Antonia - younger daughter of Marco Antonio triumviro - and his lover, whom the emperor took into account as a wife for thirty years before and after the death of his wife). Like the Colosseum, it was mainly used for gladiator fights or for naumachies. It is assumed that it remained intact, albeit in a state of ever greater neglect and abandonment, until the fifteenth century. Later it would have been occasionally used as a stone quarry for some buildings of the Republic of Venice, as well as for the local inhabitants. In fact, it rose to the honor of the chronicles in 1583 when in the Venetian Senate, pouring Pola into a state of ever greater decay and desolation, it was proposed to dismantle the Arena piece by piece and to rebuild it in Venice. To avoid this was mainly the action of the Venetian senator Gabriele Emo and for this his commitment, in the following year the city of Pula placed a plaque in perpetual memory and gratitude on a tower of the Arena, on the sea side. It was the subject of extensive restoration during the Napoleonic era. It is still used today, similarly to the Arena of Verona: it is a coveted theater and music center and in 1993 it hosted the Pula festival and the Histria festivals, as well as an episode of Games without frontiers in 1981. Every summer it is the privileged stage of the Pola Film Festival. World famous personalities such as Sting, Julio Iglesias, Anastacia, Luciano Pavarotti, Grace Jones, Norah Jones, Alanis Morissette, David Gilmour have performed in this arena. Currently, it is able to accommodate five thousand spectators. The amphitheater, in white limestone, is divided into three orders thanks to the superposition of two series of arches; a wall lightened by quadrangular openings crowns the building forming the third order. After the expansion of Vespasiano, the oval of the plant reached the size of 132.5 mx 105. Seen from the coast, it has a height of 32.5 m, but since the building stands on a slope, the opposite side to the sea (to the east) it is considerably reduced in height: it has only the second order, of 72 arches. Also due to the slope of the land, on the coast side the orders rest on a massive base. Foreparts distributed on the circumference give rhythm to the construction. Originally the cavea, divided into two menians, included forty steps to accommodate up to 23,000 spectators.
The Pula arena (also Pula amphitheater) is the sixth largest of its kind. Its name derives from the Latin ărēna, which indicates the sand that covered the audiences of the Roman amphitheatres. Among the Polesi, the emblematic monument of the city, with a great symbolic and emotional value, is usually called Rena, from the Istroveneto dialect. The amphitheater was built between 2 BC. and on 14 A.D. under the emperor Augustus, taking the material from the known stone quarries located on the outskirts of the city and still existing today. Later, the emperor Vespasian, who had commissioned the Colosseum in Rome, enlarged it (according to legend, he wanted to pay homage to Cenis, a freedwoman of Istrian origin native to Pula, former secretary of Antonia - younger daughter of Marco Antonio triumviro - and his lover, whom the emperor took into account as a wife for thirty years before and after the death of his wife). Like the Colosseum, it was mainly used for gladiator fights or for naumachies. It is assumed that it remained intact, albeit in a state of ever greater neglect and abandonment, until the fifteenth century. Later it would have been occasionally used as a stone quarry for some buildings of the Republic of Venice, as well as for the local inhabitants. In fact, it rose to the honor of the chronicles in 1583 when in the Venetian Senate, pouring Pola into a state of ever greater decay and desolation, it was proposed to dismantle the Arena piece by piece and to rebuild it in Venice. To avoid this was mainly the action of the Venetian senator Gabriele Emo and for this his commitment, in the following year the city of Pula placed a plaque in perpetual memory and gratitude on a tower of the Arena, on the sea side. It was the subject of extensive restoration during the Napoleonic era. It is still used today, similarly to the Arena of Verona: it is a coveted theater and music center and in 1993 it hosted the Pula festival and the Histria festivals, as well as an episode of Games without frontiers in 1981. Every summer it is the privileged stage of the Pola Film Festival. World famous personalities such as Sting, Julio Iglesias, Anastacia, Luciano Pavarotti, Grace Jones, Norah Jones, Alanis Morissette, David Gilmour have performed in this arena. Currently, it is able to accommodate five thousand spectators. The amphitheater, in white limestone, is divided into three orders thanks to the superposition of two series of arches; a wall lightened by quadrangular openings crowns the building forming the third order. After the expansion of Vespasiano, the oval of the plant reached the size of 132.5 mx 105. Seen from the coast, it has a height of 32.5 m, but since the building stands on a slope, the opposite side to the sea (to the east) it is considerably reduced in height: it has only the second order, of 72 arches. Also due to the slope of the land, on the coast side the orders rest on a massive base. Foreparts distributed on the circumference give rhythm to the construction. Originally the cavea, divided into two menians, included forty steps to accommodate up to 23,000 spectators.