 Would you look at that? It's a brand new building, but the point of this video isn't this brand new building It's the inside of the Circus Maximus, and yes, I know what you're thinking Isn't the Circus Maximus in Rome? Well, this one is also called Circus Maximus and instead of being in Rome. It's in Merida also known as Augusta Emerita Augusta Emerita was founded in 25 BC by Augustus as a military colony to help keep the surrounding area pacified and in Roman control and one of the things the Romans did was go and watch the horses race and they love to watch it and it wasn't like the horse races we go to where we think of one jockey on one horse, but rather it was a chariot here driving a team of horses and as you can see It was a long racetrack, but that doesn't really give you a sense of how big it is this Shot taken from the new building, which has a beautiful observation deck gives you a slightly better idea of just how big this thing was and As you can see there is a general plan to how these things are arranged They're generally oblong square on one end rounded on the other and on the square end they have the carceries carcades in Latin and That's where the horses start and they go out Through a series of gates and obviously on my diagram. I didn't position them exactly right but here you can see them in their ruined form and Then down the middle of the track was a spina It had all sorts of decorations and water features and sometimes obelisks, but it basically helps separate the Direction of the race which generally went counterclockwise around the spina and these Circuses were usually really huge like this one when it was fully completed had a seating capacity of something on the order 30,000 people which would be like the entire town showing up and as you can see the seating is in Various conditions and this seating down here shows a little bit of curvature at the end Which is not usual because I am down near the carcerace where it should be all squared off but you can see it's a little curved and The seats were vaulted up as you can see in this photo this one. They filled in with Earth and Here you can see some more of the stands which Again, they're in various state of Preservation because this building is old. I mean it's over 2,000 years old In fact, it has its own history and in this picture right here In the 1800s they wanted to build a road going from Madrid to Lisbon and it went right through here. So They put it right through the Circus Because I guess you could do this sort of stuff back in the day. Well, I mean, I suppose we still do It's just like oh, this isn't important anymore. So we'll knock the building over and Whatever, but that's how it seems to go things are deemed more or less important by various cultures and here is a building that was uncovered doubtless during the construction of the one next door and Because now we have decided that Roman remains are important. They excavated it put in some interpretive signage and made it easy for visitors to see but unfortunately it's One of those things where these ruins where there are about six to ten inches tall They're hard to interpret. So here let's put some lines over it and you can see how it looks a bit more like Stables because this building was kind of near the Circus Yeah, it takes a lot of imagination sometimes to see these things so putting the lines down. I hope that helped you see and Finally This is it for this week's video next week. I might try doing Something on a different topic or I might keep going with my Roman stuff that I saw recently I don't know but as promised this channel is going to be a bit of a mix. I'm going to see what works see what doesn't Learn how to make various kinds of videos If you like the mix I'm making go ahead and subscribe I Do like comments those those are nice and the algorithm seems to like it when you say like