El Jem is located inland, to the west of us, and the only ways to get there are either as part of a tour or by taxi, as the amphitheater is located in an isolated small town. Since I preferred to see it through my own eyes rather than through a guide’s, we had to take our chances with a cab. We went into town to look for the safest and comfiest looking car we could find for the hour and fifteen-minute drive and got into the back of Habib’s bright yellow cab. All of the taxis here are yellow. The road out to El Jem was a stretch of tarmac that wound its way through the ochre landscape, passing through occasional hamlets.
Upon arriving, we caught our first glimpse of the sheer size of the colosseum: built in the early 3rd Century, the colosseum is the second-largest in the world (after Rome’s). It is 149m long by 124m wide, with three tiers of seating 30m high, with seating capacity for up to 35,000 people. Today, it’s used as a classical and jazz concert venue. Our driver had to drop us off away from the entrance, which meant that we had to walk around the outside of the structure to enter.
I’m always in complete awe of these incredible buildings that, after almost two millennia, are still standing and largely intact. As you walk into the coliseum and look around, you get a sense of how a gladiator might have felt as he waited to see what he had to defend himself against to save his life, all while the crowds were vying for his blood. This colosseum is unusual in that you can walk through many of the passageways that would have held beasts and prisoners alike before being led out to the arena. You can’t help but try to imagine what the noise and expectation of the 35,000 spectators whipped up into a frenzy would have sounded like.
We spent a couple of hours walking around this incredible place. We would have stayed longer if it weren’t for the fact that we had agreed with our getaway driver to meet him at a certain time for our harum-scarum trip back into Madia.
Dream Chasers 