Towards the end of the 1st century AD even Eporedia was equipped with an amphitheatre, a large elliptical building destined to house ten to fifteen thousand spectators, dedicated to gladiator games, hunting shows and capital execution of “dannati ad bestias”, meaning those condemned to be torn to pieces or torn to shreds by ferocious beasts.
The complex was along the road towards Vercelli, at the South placed against an imposing wall whose purpose was to support the sloping ground.
The building was built on an embankment completely contained by the podium wall and, outwards, from a ring wall reinforced by a series of semi-circular concamerations, in part still very visible, which were used to contrast the soil thrust. The entrances opened at the two ends of the major axis.
Inside the arena there was an underground room connected by a hallway to the service rooms located under the cavea, it was used to handle scene equipment and animals using a lift, passage with a vault covered ceiling and brick floor running under the podium and connecting the various service rooms made in correspondence with the main axis. The wall of the podium ended in a long transenna decorated by bronze sheets ornate with large relief studs.
Near the ring walls you can still see signs today of the structure of an antique villa demolished to make room for the amphitheatre. Built towards the end of the 1st Century AD, immediately outside of the city and restructured multiple times during a period of approximately one Century, the old mansion had many rooms decorated with frescos, the most recent of them dated between 50 and 70 A D.
Culture Department
Ivrea Municipality