Just as today every visitor enters the Colosseum with a ticket purchased at the box office, in ancient times spectators also had to present at the entrance an iron token with the seat number indicated on it. Yes, in those days absolutely all seats in the amphitheater were not only numbered, but also distributed among different social classes.

Closest to the arena were the boxes of senators, magistrates, priests, Vestal Virgins, and members of the imperial family. Higher up, roughly in the middle of all the rows, were marble seats for the middle class. The very top colonnade, meanwhile, was reserved for foreigners, slaves, women, and the poor, who watched the performance from the most ordinary wooden benches. Above them were only the sailors, who on especially sunny or rainy days stretched a protective awning over the arena.

Today the reconstruction of the Colosseum is presented quite illustratively for tourists – half of the arena is covered with decking showing the level where the stage used to be. The other half looks exactly as it has survived to the present day – there you can see the service rooms where animals and gladiators waited for their turn to enter the arena.