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The first illustration shows the Colosseum on site with the Forum Romanum and Imperial Fora to the left, the baths of Titus and Trajan above and overlaying the Golden House of Nero. Immediately to the right of the Colosseum is a gladiator training barrack. The curved portions of the training arena can be seen in Rome today. Further to the right is a republican house that now lays under the Church of S. Clemente.
The Colosseum was built in four stories. The first three were ornamented with Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns and are frequently called by those names. The fourth, top, floor was added after the original building was completed under Titus, according to some authorities.
The floor plan of the Doric, first, story is shown below. The small circles outside the Colosseum were stone anchors for ropes that braced the masts supporting the awning.
The gold colored sections are stairways to the upper levels.
The illustration on the left shows the Ionic, second, story. It is drawn as if the Colosseum were sliced through at that level. The seats of the Doric level are shown in purple. The black stairways would be exposed as they extened down through the seating areas. The yellow stairways are internal, leading to the higher levels.
The drawing on the right is the Corinthian, third, story. The seats for the Ionic story are shown in green, those for the Doric story are in purple.
This drawing shows the top story. In most plans it is shown as a narrow set of seating tiers between the supporting columns (the square bases with circular column shafts inside them) and the exterior walls. This was seating for the poorest. This section appears to have been covered with a permanent roof that spanned the gap between columns and walls.
The drawing below shows an aerial view of the Colosseum. All that can be seen of the top floor is the roof overhead (colored gold). The line of small circles immediately outside the walls are the poles that supported the awning. In this drawing, unlike those above, the colors have been rendered a bit more realistically to give a better sense of what it may have looked like.
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