3-084-564 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Capuchin Sermon at the Colosseum of Rome, 1822. The arena of cruel, pagan public amusement in antiquity has become a place of Christian faith. Various groups of believers are scattered across the vast oval of the ruined Colosseum. A wooden cross rises in the centre of the monument, which Pope Benedict XIV had dedicated during the eighteenth century as a place of memorial for Christian martyrs by installing the Stations of the Cross.