Conjunto Arqueológico de Itálica

This guide to the Roman ruins of Italica near Seville opens with a mismatch: an amphitheater built for twenty-five thousand seats in a town that likely held only eight thousand people. From there it traces how the site was stripped for centuries, from medieval villagers burning its marble for lime to a nineteenth-century countess, Regla Manjon, who carted off its mosaics for her own mansion floor. Look down into the service pit beneath the amphitheater's arena floor, where gladiators once waited before a fight.