Skip to content (press enter)
Colosseum Museum

Carlo Lucangeli’s wooden model of the Colosseum

Between 1790 and 1812, in the midst of a period of renewed interest towards ancient monuments and at the dawn of the first excavations that would eventually make the Amphitheater complete once again, the architect and scenographer Carlo Lucangeli created the scale model (1:60) of the Colosseum. Comprised of 60 distinct sections, assembled in 5 concentric bands, the model is the result of detailed studies of the monument’s architecture and of the first investigations conducted in 1795 beneath the arena floor.

Poplar wood was used for the model’s structural elements, beech for the columns, architraves and ledges, stucco for the capitals, lead for the railings, bone for the pulleys: in this way, each of the monument’s features was captured in great detail, while the delicate chromatic effects of oil paint were used to give the travertine its characteristic bone white hue.

Lucangeli, who died in 1812, was not able to complete the model, and so it was finished by his brother-in-law Paolo Dalbono. It was in fact Dalbono who added, among other things, the statues on the façade, the hypogea and the velarium (now lost).

Despite its small size (height 82.5 cm; longest axis 318 cm; shortest axis 261 cm), this model has helped provide a clear idea of the complexity and accuracy of the monument’s architecture, combining the appeal of set design with a rigorous attention to detail and thus becoming a source of inspiration and object of study for the architects of its time.