This is the first book to analyze the evolution of the Roman amphitheatre as an architectural form. Katherine Welch addresses the critical period in the history of this building type: its origins and dissemination under the Republic, from the third to first centuries BC; its monumentalization as an architectural form under Augustus; and its canonization as a building type with the Colosseum (AD 80). She explores the social and political contexts of each of these phases in detail. The study then shifts focus to the reception of the amphitheatre and the games in the Greek East, a part of the Empire that was, initially, deeply fractured about the new realities of Roman rule.

"Repeatedly, Welch`s book stirs the embers under simmering controversies, thereby giving us both good reading and adventurous scholarship." (Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians)

"The Colosseum, more than any other building from ancient Rome, is routinely the subject of both scholarly and popular texts. While it seems that important studies are published on this structure every year, rarely does any attain the status of definitive text. Katherine Welch`s The Roman Amphitheatre: From Its Origins to the Colosseum is such a book. Welch`s splendid volume is a culmination of her amphitheatre studies and provides a much-needed examination of the building type`s origins in Republican Rome and its development up to and including the Colosseum." (Thomas J. Morton, The Art Bulletin)