What the Colosseum Dungeons Really Were
The Colosseum dungeons were the hypogeum: the arena's backstage of lifts, ramps and trapdoors, not a prison. Its story from AD 80 to the 2021 reopening.
The “Colosseum dungeons” were never dungeons. Their real name is the hypogeum, from the Greek for “under the earth”: the amphitheatre’s backstage, a grid of corridors, ramps and lift shafts beneath the arena floor. Animals, fighters and scenery waited down here for their cue, and teams of workers turned the machines that sent them up through trapdoors into the sand.
It was not a prison. Nobody served a sentence below the arena, and you won’t find cells, chains or torture rooms on the route today. You will find the working parts of the most famous building in Rome, which is why a visit underground shows you how the Colosseum worked, not just what it looked like.
This guide covers how the backstage was built, how its machinery ran, what happened to it after the last games and the myths that still cling to it. For the route itself, stop by stop, read what you see underground.
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A backstage rebuilt in stone under Domitian
The building the Romans knew as the Flavian Amphitheatre, Amphitheatrum Flavium in Latin, opened in AD 80. The Colosseum Archaeological Park describes a first underground built in wood; because timber does not survive, how much of it stood at the opening is hard to pin down. Under the emperor Domitian the underground was rebuilt in masonry, and the stone walls you walk between today follow that plan.
The rebuild changed what the arena could stage. The park records naval shows at the inauguration, with water let into the arena, and says they ended once the wooden structures below were replaced in stone. A floor sitting on a forest of walls and lift shafts cannot be flooded.
The finished hypogeum covers about half a hectare. Fourteen corridors run either side of a large central corridor, laid out symmetrically, and every one of them served the show overhead. Above them lay a wooden arena floor covered in sand, watched by an estimated 50,000 or more spectators. That floor has gone, which is why the hypogeum lies open to the sky today and you look down into it from the tiers.
The structure did not survive in one piece. A fire in AD 217 destroyed the underground, the Colosseum stayed closed until 222, and the hypogeum was rebuilt again. The park dates the end of gladiatorial games to 438, under Valentinian III. Animal hunts carried on, and the last documented show took place in AD 523.
How the lifts, ramps and trapdoors worked
The whole system existed to make things appear from nowhere. The park’s page on the lifts and platforms puts the height difference between the underground and the arena floor at about 6 metres. A cage was loaded at the bottom of a shaft, workers turned a capstan to wind the ropes, and the cage rose to a trapdoor in the floor. When the trapdoor opened, an animal stepped out in front of the crowd with no visible entrance behind it. Ramps and platforms did the same job for scenery and for performers.
It took a lot of people. These are the park’s estimates for the different phases, reconstructed from the slots and shafts that survive:
| Period | What lifted things into the arena | Crew |
|---|---|---|
| Flavian phase (late 1st century AD) | 28 hoists for animal cages, plus 20 platforms in the central corridor for scenery | 224 people working the hoists at once |
| From the Severan period onward | About 60 small lifts replaced the earlier system | not given |
Archaeologist Heinz-Jürgen Beste of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome estimated 60 two-storey capstans at the system’s peak, as reported by Smithsonian. His figure and the park’s describe different moments in the building’s life, so both can stand.
The wooden machinery itself has disappeared. What survives is the stone that held it: the shafts, slots and housings along the corridor walls. To show how it worked, a team built a working replica lift and trapdoor and unveiled it in June 2015 for the documentary Colosseum: Roman Death Trap. It stands about 7.5 metres (25 feet) tall and is turned by up to eight people. A wolf was the first animal raised in it, and it is still on display in the hypogeum, so you pass it on the route.
Who waited below, and for how long
The hypogeum was a staging area. Animals in cages were brought up to the lift shafts, performers waited for their turn, and scenery was lifted into place on the central platforms. Everything held here was held briefly, for the day’s programme, and then went up into the arena.
The confusion comes from the word “dungeon”, which suggests long-term confinement. The park describes the underground as a service area of lifts, platforms and passages. If you picture a theatre’s backstage during a performance, with props, stagehands and actors queued in the wings, you are closer to the truth than if you picture a castle prison.
Rubble, excavation and the restoration
After the last games in AD 523, the hypogeum filled with earth and debris over the following centuries and disappeared from view. Excavators cleared it in stages from the 19th century onward, which is how its walls came to stand exposed in the middle of the arena.
The modern restoration was paid for by the Tod’s group. Its chairman, Diego Della Valle, pledged €25 million in 2011 for work on the Colosseum, and the hypogeum works began in 2018 with a team of 81 archaeologists, engineers and other specialists. A small part of the underground had opened to visitors in 2016. On 25 June 2021 the fully restored hypogeum was unveiled with a 160-metre (525-foot) walkway through the corridors, as CNN reported at the time.
The newest addition is the Passage of Commodus, a vaulted tunnel dug in the late 1st or early 2nd century AD that runs from the imperial box on the south side to the outside. It opened to the public on 27 October 2025. Visits run on Mondays and Wednesdays, always with the park’s educational tour, in groups of up to 8, last 25 minutes and go on sale 7 days ahead, according to the official ticket page. The passage is a separate ticket from the underground.
Myths about the Colosseum dungeons
“Gladiators were locked in prison cells”
The underground was not a prison. Its small rooms and corridors held animals, people and equipment for the length of a show. There were no long-term cells, and the route today shows corridors, lift shafts and machinery housings, the remains of a working backstage.
“It’s a network of dark medieval tunnels”
You walk the hypogeum in daylight. The arena floor that once covered it has gone, apart from a rebuilt section, so most of the underground is open to the sky. The covered part of the visit is the exhibition gallery, and the walls themselves are Roman, not medieval.
“The arena was regularly flooded for sea battles”
Naval shows did happen, but only in the earliest years, while the underground was still a wooden structure. The park says they ended once it was rebuilt in masonry. You can’t flood a floor that sits on stone walls and lift shafts, so sea battles were never a regular part of the programme in the Colosseum as you see it now.
“Thumbs down meant death”
Roman writers mention a “turned thumb”, pollice verso, but no source settles which way the thumb pointed or what each direction meant. The thumbs-down picture comes mostly from Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1872 painting Pollice Verso, which later shaped how films showed the scene.
“The Romans called it the Colosseum”
They called it the Amphitheatrum Flavium, the Flavian Amphitheatre, after the dynasty that built it. “Colosseum” came into use later, in the Middle Ages, and is usually linked to the colossal statue of Nero that stood nearby.
“The arena was the building”
“Arena” comes from the Latin harena, sand: the layer spread over the wooden floor. Strictly, the arena is only the performance floor, and the underground lies beneath it. Our guide to the underground versus the arena explains which ticket reaches which.
Seeing the hypogeum for yourself
The standard Colosseum ticket stops at the upper levels. To stand among these corridors you need either the park’s Full Experience Underground and Arena ticket or a guided tour that books the underground for you. A guide earns their fee here, because the remains make most sense when someone links each shaft and corridor to the show above.
If you want history told well in a very small group, the How is Italy max-6 tour takes up to 6 people and costs from $200 per person for the underground option, with a rating of 4.7/5 from more than 1,600 reviews; pick the underground option when you book, because the same listing also sells an arena-only version. Our full breakdown of that tour covers what else it includes. To compare it with the other guided options, start from the homepage, then read what you see underground so you know what the walkway shows before you choose.
See How the Colosseum Worked, Not Just What It Looked Like
Underground places go fast, and guided groups below the arena are capped at six guests per guide. Check dates on our top pick, a small-group tour of the underground, arena, Forum and Palatine.
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