Circus and Praetorium

The vaults offer the best clue for mentally reconstructing the circus. This was no isolated stadium: parts of the Roman building remain incorporated beneath the later city. Built in the first century between the Via Augusta and the provincial forum, its long track hosted horse and chariot races. Moving between corridors, imagine the contrast between these circulation spaces and the noise of the stands. The Praetorium tower linked different levels of the monumental city through stairways; later uses also left their marks. Along the interior route, the sarcophagus of Hippolytus and Phaedra offers a change of scale, from architecture for crowds to a story carved in marble.