The 7 World wonders -Part 3-

The Colosseum in Rome, Italy.

The picture shows the best preserved area of the Colosseum at dusk. It was taken by David Iliff.

The Colosseum was built within less than 10 years between 70 AD and 80 AD and is the largest ever built amphitheatre in the Roman Empire. It was used for many reasons but most often its use has been for entertaining purposes (in our modern times comparable with the Spanish toreros and bullfighting) with fight between trained slaves and wild animals.

In the modern times it has become a symbol against this kind of "entertainment". Several anti–death penalty demonstrations took place in front of the Colosseum in 2000. Since that time, as a gesture against the death penalty, the local authorities of Rome change the color of the Colosseum's night time illumination from white to gold whenever a person condemned to the death penalty anywhere in the world gets their sentence commuted or is released,^[18] or if a jurisdiction abolishes the death penalty. Most recently, the Colosseum was illuminated in gold when capital punishment was abolished in the American state of New Mexico in April 2009.^[19] (extract from Wikipedia - Colosseum description)

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