Why is So Much of The Colosseum Missing?

As you may know, there was no newsletter last week because I was on vacation with my family in Italy.  This was, for me, a truly unforgettable experience in many ways.  Italy is a country incredibly rich in architectural and building history and I just couldn’t get enough of it.  I’d always assumed, for example, that Rome’s Colosseum looks the way it does today due to natural deterioration.  Not so, I learned.  After the fall of the Roman Empire, Romans treated the Colosseum as a stone quarry – disassembling it block by block and re-using the marble, sandstone and metal as building materials for newer structures.  It was, in effect, an ancient form of recycling.