Your Express Colosseum Gladiator Gate Tour will bring you right in the middle of the action, deep in the history of the Colosseum and the Roman Empire. With privileged access to the monument, you will walk through one of the Colosseum's ancient main entrances straight to the arena floor and relive the blood-and-thunder shows held here millennia ago. You will enjoy an extraordinary experience, shared with only a small group of six people and your local expert guide. Walking through the Colosseum eastern entrance, above the gladiators’ underground tunnel and across the gallery which saw thousands injured or dead bodies carried away, with a skilled guide, no rush and no people around, and then across the arena and the first floor to enjoy the stunning views from there is the most perfect way to explore the monument. Your guide will recount compelling stories on it and its gory games and fulfill all your curiosities. Together with such a knowledgeable companion and a restricted number of fellow travelers, your journey back in time to the majestic, brutal atmosphere which dominated the Colosseum millennia ago will be absolutely unforgettable. This incredible, eternal story started in 71 AD, when the emperor Vespasian destroyed private imperial gardens to devote the area to a brand new function – public entertainment! – as a gift to the Romans and part of his propaganda strategy. It was then that the building of one of the largest amphitheaters ever, still icon of Rome, started. The Colosseum games have preserved their absorbing appeal intact through the millennia, from 80 AD, when the first shows were held during the reign of Titus, to the fall of the Roman Empire which marked their end, until contemporary times. Nothing could be more engaging, fascinating, and enlightening than exploring their story and the place where they took place together with our local expert guide by your side, in an exclusive group of six people. You will really take in all the beauty and the frightfulness of the place, and fulfill all the curiosities that the monument and the guide’s words will inspire you, in the tiny company of six keen participants. Eighty entrance arches frame the Colosseum facade. Two of them were crucial during the shows: the western Porta Triumphalis, used for the solemn opening processions of the games headed by the emperors and for the entrance of victorious gladiators, and the eastern Porta Libitinaria, whose story is much more intriguing. You will exclusively enter the Colosseum with our guide through this second arch, to immediately immerse yourself in a faraway, forgotten atmosphere, made of lights and shadows. In the wake of the words and the stories that your expert guide will recount on the way, you will relive all the sounds, feelings, colors, and smells that once animated the amphitheater and feel intense emotions that will remain in your memories forever. This entrance to the Colosseum was once known as Porta Libitinaria, after Libitina, goddess of funerals and burials, and covered two purposes: it was at the same time the official access to the arena for the largest exotic animals involved in the shows and the exit to quickly carry away fighters injured, even to death, and the dead bodies of losers. Together with your small group, you will shiver at the thought of what was going on, in the meanwhile, one floor below, in the underground gallery which connected the dungeons with the gladiators’ residence and prison nearby, with heroic, valorous fighters walking their last, damned steps to the arena. It will be an immersive, shared experience you will never forget.