The Post-Roman Amphitheatre at Chester

What happened to Chester's Roman amphitheatre
after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire?

It's too soon after the excavations to know, and in
fairness it may never be understood. There is some
evidence from amphitheatres in Western Europe of
Post-Roman occupation, of the buildings being used
as defended sites protecting the local population,
perhaps even as power-bases for local chieftains.

When we discussed this shot for 'Lost Treasures', a
visual analogy was to one of the post-apocalypse
settlements in the Mad Max films of the 1980s. As
we had alot of press-coverage this past Friday (18th
May 2007) , the papers picked up on this in their
headlines so it now seems Mad Max 'ruled the roost'
in Post-Roman Chester.....don't believe everything
you read in the papers!

Around the start of the Chester Amphitheatre
excavations, Take 27 was commissioned to produce
some cgi to help explain what the amphitheatre may
have looked like.

Although it began simply enough, emulating the
interpretations of the earlier excavations in the
20th Century, it quickly became apparent that those
interpretations could not be entirely correct, so
supported by new evidence emerging from the
excavations we continued the project. Indeed we are
still working on further greatly enhanced depictions of
the life of the amphitheatre which in due course will
appear on our Roman Chester website.

On the left are three visualisations of successive
amphitheatres at Chester, as they are currently
understood, referred to as 1A, 1B and 2, top to
bottom.

3D modelling and cgi allows not just the creation of
useful images like these, but also a very real tool in
trying to understand the structure of these buildings.
With 1A and 1B, we used 3D geometry to interpret
the height of the outer wall from measurements
between the arena and so-called 'concentric wall',
and what was interpreted on-site as the base of a
staircase.

Equally useful is figuring how big it could not have
been!

Amphitheatre 1A is currently thought to date from around 80AD, and was apparently a
simple ludus, or training school, used solely by the Roman Army. It was superseded
around 90AD by Amphitheatre 1B, the middle picture, a somewhat more lavish
structure with wooden seats though we have this curious interpretation of the seating
being half timber, and half turf bank, based on what was not found on-site. Interestingly,
both 1A and 1B seem to have a seating capacity of around 5,000, roughly the size of a
legion. Amphitheatre 2 was built in the early to mid 3rd Century, clearly a much bigger
and more lavish affair, seating approx. 8,000.

For more info have a look at the official website of the Chester Amphitheatre Project.

Ultimately we chose to do a gentle camera move,
pulling back to reveal the twilight amphitheatre, with
wooden watch towers, smoke and flickering firelight
from evening cooking. A somewhat sanitised
image of what were very harsh and uncertain
times. The rule of Rome was over, but perhaps one
of its greatest monuments in Britain, with its stories
of so much violence, ultimately gave shelter and
protection to a population fearful of the future.

Click Here to see the Final Shot