Circus Maximus

This grassy depression was once the largest stadium in the world, and it was not even close. The Circus Maximus held an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand spectators — five times the Colosseum, more than any modern stadium on Earth. It was six hundred and twenty-one metres long and one hundred and eighteen metres wide. The Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, Wembley Stadium — they are all playing catch-up to a racetrack that was running at capacity before Christ was born.

Chariot racing was the most popular sport in the Roman world, dwarfing gladiatorial combat in both attendance and cultural significance. The races were organized around four factions — the Reds, Whites, Blues, and Greens — and fan allegiance was fanatical. Riots broke out regularly. The Nika riots in Constantinople in 532 AD (inspired by the same faction system) killed thirty thousand people and nearly toppled an emperor. In Rome, charioteers were celebrities on a scale that makes modern athletes look modest. Gaius Appuleius Diocles, a second-century charioteer, earned thirty-five million eight hundred and sixty-three thousand one hundred and twenty sesterces over his career — which historians have calculated as the equivalent of approximately fifteen billion US dollars in modern terms.

The track had a central barrier called the spina, decorated with obelisks, statues, and egg-shaped lap counters. The turns at either end — the metae — were the killing zones. Chariots took the corners at full speed, and crashes were spectacular and often fatal. The Romans had a word for it: naufragium, meaning shipwreck. Drivers wrapped the reins around their waists, which meant a crash could drag them under the horses and around the track.

Today, it is a public park where people jog and walk their dogs. The shape is perfectly preserved in the terrain — you can see exactly where the track was, where the seating rose on both sides. Sometimes the city holds concerts and events here. The Rolling Stones played to seventy thousand people in 2014. That is less than a third of what it held two thousand years ago.