I found on the web some photos of a gladiatorial duel realised with 54mm or 20mm plastic figures. As scene you can see a wall made by preformed blocks with some interesting airshaft windows at ground level. As you surely know, under arenas there were passages and wings, underground facilities for the spectacles. So here we haven’t a complete arena – I dunno if instead this is only part of a complete arena – but an idea on how to create walls with something less expected as doors.

If you want a luxury arena, you could buy a wooden arena like this one, photographed during the Christmas food and craft fair here in Rome. It is a currently Colosseum representation made by local artisans. Very elegant, even if the walls are not so easy to climb to play with miniatures inside. Maybe this can persuade you that this thing is your cup of tea…

Matakishi website is a reference point for our hobby: great projects, a lot of creativity, a perpetual source of inspiration. His approach with the theme “arena” is developed with a Zen perspective. There are more empty than full spaces. The stage is a clean round table. Above a raised 9 square pattern delimited by some sparse grass. At the end of the table a stylised podium with classic architectonic lines, build with cork sheets. Simple and effective.

Another arena made of heavy resin, but with the possibility to customise the kinds of terraces. Battlezone has released various blocks with different structures, so you have got timber terraces, marble ones, the emperor stand, the holding cell block. Inside, as an autonomous piece, there is a circular arena for gladiators. You can compose your arena with the blocks that you want, giving to it a non standard or asymmetric look ideal for a late Roman setting. More original than usual, more easy to store.

What a beautiful multicoloured and self-built arena! The only flaw is the circular form, if he had chosen an elliptic one this could be better. I like the terraces, one part is from a villa with a balcony as emperor stand, the other separate part is a longer multilevel terrace with covering. The inner ring is with the lower band red coloured while the upper one is yellow. As removable parts on the ground we found a small lake and a structure for pontiarii games. All details that bring to life this model. The final touch are the cages for wild beast, but you can find a lot of particular bright ideas. I applaud the author of this model for his great work. It is not a simple place to play with gladiators but a complete diorama.

It was build for a French convention, to present a card driven ruleset called “Vox Populi”.

During these months I reviewed a lot of arenas for your little gladiators. I examined simple and complex realisations, gorgeous and rough models. Now I want to show you these draws from the beautiful book of Peter Connolly “Ancient Rome”, but you can find it even in other books, like “Ancient Cities”. Here the Amazon link to buy it or to know more about it. If you want to be the architect and the builder of an arena project you can take here some ideas about what is an arena. Something like this…

This is the complexity of the Colosseum, if you want to know what is behind it. Huge, isn’t? And full of ways and corridors for peoples, attendants, artists and beasts. Under here there is the reconstruction of a decorated access to the terraces, that you can see smaller in the upper cross section image.

Below a fight scene in the arena where you can see the decorated inner walls and the musical accompaniment performed by a water organ, panpipes and trumpets. Together with a view of the terraces from the ground.

To have a look to a smaller arena, I put here a drawing of Ludus Magnus. It was an arena near the Colosseum, with an underground passage to it. It was a training camp and a school, with the possibility to set spectacles for a selected public. This have got a few rows of seats, in order to see fighters very well and not as points on sand, so you can appreciate the style of the fight. Its dimension are small for a large amount of people but it is big enough for its scopes. The structure is a little peculiar because of the fact that the arena is inside another building, a rectangular one. But if you are thinking about arenas smaller than Colosseum, or rather arenas for minor cities, the dimensions are these. You can just add another terraces ring and some underground accesses.

I surf the web to find some suggestion to built my arena, so I show here lots of arenas. Next posts some other arenas.

A long time ago Fabio “TB Line” from Bologna sent me this image about something on his computer. Was he projecting a doughnut with CAD programme, he wasn’t?

The real story is that Fabio promised me an arena made of polystyrene for my gladiators. He is the wizard of polystyrene, you know. In the first instance he was thinking about a theatre, then he realised that gladiators fought in an amphitheatre! So he took a photo of the Coliseum and wanted to replicate it, in 28mm scale!!! When I explain to him that I don’t own a home where storage a 1 metre high polystyrene block, he thought to something more realistic in size to play with miniatures. He studied the matter considering stairs, water conducts, underground backstage, terraces, trapdoors, ways, sunshade, empire stand. With a modular approach this arena have to be divided in parts, so that its storage and transport was easy and detailed and internal parts could be built. A great project with a lot of building elements to assemble. Too great, indeed. So he postponed its realisation day after day, week after week, month after month. I thought to his life, with a wife, two little girls, a ruleset, a 10mm miniature company, and his real job. Then I decided it would be better if the arena was built directly by me in a more unpretentious form.

As result of Fabio involvement in the project I have got only this photo of the CAD design: an electronic doughnut. And his friendship. He is a good guy.

When I wrote these lines and prepared this post was 12 years ago. Fabio is still one of my friends and I’m still involved in gladiators in games. Things to do are time burning and even this blog suffer for this. Today, while I are sitting around at home with scarce will to do important things, I found my old blog. Maybe it was time to publish posts that I almost prepared for the blog. So, it is the time. Every Sunday a new (old) post until I have them. And if you want to find what I’m doing there is my Instagram. The blog was better but I cannot edit it anymore. See you in the next posts!

I don’t know why in Romics we can find always new amazing Diabolik exhibit. This one was basically on Sergio Zaniboni drawer but there were a lot of interesting pieces. Diabolik is an icon of Italian comic and culture. Strange fate for a thief and assassin. Now I’m only waiting the new film.