The colleseum

The main architectural specificity of this amphitheatre lies in the fact that it is the only structure, in the Roman world, that was entirely built with ashlars and that quarry-stones were solely used for the arches. Brick, while being so extensively used in the Colosseum of Rome and in most other monuments, is completely absent here. Therefore, the Thysdritan building asserts itself particularly through its very massive silhoutte which distinguishes it from all the other ones and which is due to the thickness of its walls and piers, to the slight protrusion of its entablatures and to a clear predominance of the solid over the gaps. Undoubtedly, this is the effect of the soft and yielding nature of the stone itself, some gritstone extracted from the quarries of Réjiche, near Mahdia. This may just as well be the outcome of the extreme limitation in the decoration which is perfectly in tune with the breadth of the architectural bulk. Hence, the monument's facade looks particularly imposing with its round arches supported by massive piers decorated with engaged Corinthian pillars on the first and third floors and with columns of composite order on the second floor. Towering at a height of 36 meters, the Thysdritan building is the unique amphitheatre, along with the Colosseum of Rome, that keeps a three-floor facade nearly whole; the other amphitheatres with similar structures have been more or less destroyed but the smaller ones, better preserved sometimes, had only two floors as in Nîmes, Arles or Pula.