Roman Amphitheatre

Of Roman Aretium little stands above ground; the amphitheatre, raised in the second century, is what survived the Gothic wars and the Lombards, and even that was quarried for its stone over the following millennium. What remains is the great ellipse of the arena and its lower arcades, in a public garden at the edge of the old town. A monastery later built on the curve of the ruin now houses the national archaeological museum, named for Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, the Arezzo man who bankrolled Virgil and Horace. In summer the arena is used again for open-air performance, which is roughly what it was for.