The Cirencester amphitheatre, located just southwest of the Roman town of Corinium Dobunnorum, was an elliptical earthwork amphitheatre constructed in the early 2nd century AD, likely replacing an earlier timber phase. With banked earth ramparts revetted in stone supporting tiered wooden seating for an estimated 8,000 spectators, it was the second-largest known amphitheatre in Roman Britain, reflecting Corinium's status as the province's second city.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
As the entertainment venue for the capital of Britannia Prima, it served the civilian population of one of the wealthiest towns in Roman Britain, a major administrative and market centre for the Dobunni. Its reuse as a fortified enclosure in the 5th–6th century — possibly during the period leading up to the Saxon victory at Dyrham in 577 — makes it an important post-Roman site as well.
The earthworks survive remarkably well as upstanding banks roughly 8m high enclosing an arena about 41 by 49m, with two opposed entrances on the long axis (northeast and southwest). Excavations by Wacher and others (notably in the 1960s) revealed drystone walling, evidence of timber seating supports, and indications of post-Roman occupation including a possible blocking of one entrance, though much of the interior remains unexcavated.
The Cirencester amphitheatre, located just southwest of the Roman town of Corinium Dobunnorum, was an elliptical earthwork amphitheatre constructed in the early 2nd century AD, likely replacing an earlier timber phase. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a amphitheatre site from the Roman period in Britain.
Sapperton and Cirencester amphitheatre is classified as a Roman amphitheatre — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Korinion/Cironium (0.1 km), Corinium Roman town (0.3 km), Tar Barrows: the earthwork and buried remains of two prehistoric or Roman round barrows and the buried remains of a Romano-British or earlier funerary and ritual site (1.6 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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