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Colosseum: History TV18's Documentary Is An Exhilarating Journey Through Ancient Rome

Curated By : Navneet Vyasan

Last Updated: December 14, 2022, 16:44 IST

Mumbai, India

The eight-part series vividly brings to life the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Witness the rise and fall of the Roman Empire through the lens of one of the most exhilarating and brutal arenas in the history of humanity.

HistoryTV18’s new show documentary series makes for a perfect viewing experience for history buffs. Debuting with the episode Colosseum, it starts off with a bang by plunging its viewers into the heydays of Roman glory. As the name of the episode suggests, the makers are able to portray how the Colosseum represents something much more than a battlefield for entertainment. Amidst the cheer of thousands of people with the emperor watching, those at the center, at the precipice of death, represent the very soul of the empire.

Author Dr Barry Strauss, historian Patrick Wyman and bestselling author Simon Sebag Montefiore among others take us through an epic journey in these 45 minutes. What makes the episode intriguing is not merely the gory reproduction of the epic battles but also the tumultuous political backdrop in which it was taking place.

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The episode begins in 80AD, the massive Colosseum has taken eight years to complete. It is a theatre meant for spectacles. The documentary stresses on the fact that, in many ways, life was always going to be about combat for the Roman populace. Emperor Vespasian, under whose rule the construction of the Colosseum began has passed away. Emperor Titus has taken his place. The latter has no doubts in his mind about the ways in which he can win Roman hearts. Gladitorial contests, wild beast hunts, executions of condemned criminals, the Colosseum hosts one spectacle after the other. These events have a lasting psychological effect on Roman minds and it is this aspect that the documentary perfectly encapsulates.

The eight-part series vividly brings to life the rise and fall of the Roman Empire through the lens of one of the most exhilarating and brutal arenas in the history of humanity. The series will showcase each episode explore one of the eight major pillars that help us identify today’s Rome. Using extensive dramatic live action sequences along with special effects, the episode infuses excitement with historical storytelling to weave a compelling narrative that makes it a must watch.

The documentary airs on 17th December at 10PM. Watch it only on History TV18.

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Visiting the Palais Royal

Just across the street from the Lou­vre is the just as classy, but slight­ly less con­gest­ed, court­yard of the Palais Royal. 

Built in the mid-17th cen­tu­ry and passed down through the roy­al House of Orleans, it of course has that typ­i­cal­ly Parisian, rich his­to­ry of the­ater, pub­lic min­gling, and gen­er­al fanci­ness, like so much of this town. 

Oh, and once upon a time, it was also grand cen­tral sta­tion for ‘beau­coup’ open-air pros­ti­tu­tion, so much so, that King Louis the 9th, the biggest wet-blan­ket of all the Louis­es in France (and name­sake of St. Louis, Mis­souri, which is also a lot more fun that IX ever was), who after hav­ing enough of hear­ing all the mur­mur­ings of the lat­est in hook­er news over Catholic Mass at the Sainte-Chapelle, decreed an out­right ban on pros­ti­tu­tion and pimp­ing. But his homies were like, « Nah dawg, isn’t that a bit much, » (ask­ing for a friend, kind of stuff). 

So Louis IX set­tled for push­ing them out of the sight of prop­er soci­ety to the edge of the city on spe­cial streets with­in Paris. But by the time he was gone, the world’s old­est pro­fes­sion (besides Tour Guid­ing) had re-staked its claim on the good real estate in town, the arcades of the Palais Royal.

Today, the Palais Roy­al is a beau­ti­ful­ly restored com­plex includ­ing gov­ern­ment offices, a sculp­ture gar­den, restau­rants, the­atre spaces, lux­u­ry stores, and a gen­er­al chill vibe. It feels Parisian rather than touristy, even though it has it’s fair share of vis­i­tors (and prob­a­bly hook­ers, let’s be hon­est, but I would imag­ine they are the high-end sort so they are more like­ly com­pan­ions to lone­ly Lau­rents din­ing at le Grand Vefour rather than flash­ing decol­letage invit­ing­ly at passers-by. For that, vis­it Rue Tra­cy. That street is a ver­i­ta­ble cleav­age contest). 

The main court­yard (and main attrac­tion) of the Palais Roy­al fea­tures the Buren Columns; black-and-white striped col­umn sculp­tures of vary­ing heights. And yes, you can walk on/climb/take pho­tos on them. Just ask all of Insta­gram. Just don’t try to sell your­self there, or do as pros­ti­tu­tion was legal­ized recent­ly. Now only being a john is a crime… seriously. 

The gar­den inside the Palais Roy­al (free to enter btw) is a great pow­er-down spot after vis­it­ing the Lou­vre. It asks noth­ing of you except that you bask in the sun on a green Parisian park chair. You can snag a crepe from Le Mus­cade (also they have lots of gluten-free stuff as they are from Brit­tany, home of buck­wheat every­thing. I rec­om­mend the salt­ed caramel crepe) and a take­away cof­fee from Cafe Kit­sune. Kick back under the shade of the rows of oh-so-French­ly man­i­cured trees, reset your mind while nosh­ing in the foot­steps of the roy­als, or just kill time before your reser­va­tion at le Grand Vefour. 

When you are refreshed and ready for your next bout of Parisian beau­ty, his­to­ry, and archi­tec­ture, make your way to the Gal­lerie Vivi­enne, one of Paris’ most beau­ti­ful cov­ered pas­sages, for a glass of wine at LeGrand Filles & Fils. 

Then, on to retail ther­a­py on Rue St. Hon­ore. This is where posh Paris hides the good stuff like the Dior and the Chanel. They don’t have shops on bustling Rue de Riv­o­li, but instead on the qui­eter, more exclu­sive Rue St. Honore. 

This is a neigh­bor­hood of two dis­tinct iden­ti­ties, as French as it gets: sev­er­al books’ worth of his­to­ry and haute cou­ture on one hand and Japan­ese influ­ence on the other. 

If you were able to claim a reser­va­tion at Le Grand Vefour, then there you are. But if your bud­get is what we call, “I have more taste than mon­ey” then head to Sap­poro or Sap­poro 2. The din­ing rooms aren’t the most charm­ing, so snag a seat at the bar so you can watch the Japan­ese chefs hard at work. Dive into some of the most deli­cious ramen soup you have ever tried for most­ly under 10€. It’s one of the best sit-down val­ues in Paris and it’s prox­im­i­ty to The Lou­vre makes it a great place to have an inex­pen­sive lunch where you can sit down semi-comfortably. 

Skip dessert at Sap­poro but don’t REALLY skip dessert (you’re in Paris). Try some Japan­ese influ­enced pas­tries at Aki Café, choco­lates from Jean-Paul Hevin (try the “pomme de terre” a choco­late ganache “pota­to” wrapped inside a fon­dant “peel”), or salt­ed caramel mac­arons from Pierre Herme, the Picas­so of Pastry. 

Restau­rant Palau roy­al also has an amaz­ing terrace.

Address: 8 Rue de Mont­pen­si­er, 75001

Metro: Palais-Royale-Musée-du-Lou­vre (lines 1 or 7) 

Neigh­bor­hood: 1st arrondisse­ment , Palais Roy­al area

Near­by: Lou­vre , Tui­leries

Open­ing times: From 8 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. everyday

How to book tick­ets to Palais Royal

You don’t need to, it’s free

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Restored: Royale Tourcruiser

Vintage caravan enthusiasts don't get much more dedicated than serial-restorer Chris Lowery who, with wife Christine, has brought this Royale back to life

By Andy Jenkinson Published: May 24, 2017

Vintage caravan enthusiasts don’t get much more dedicated than serial-restorer Chris Lowery who, with wife Christine, has brought this Royale back to life

Chris Lowery loves his Royale caravans and has owned eight examples since 1996 when he joined the Royale Owners’ Club, which is still very much alive and kicking.

Having restored 10 Royales over the years, Chris and wife Christine had always hankered after the single-axle Tourcruiser, launched in 1976 for the grand sum of more than £6000!

Then one day they spotted one of these vintage caravans for sale near Kilbride in Scotland . They made a bid and, before they knew it, they were on their way up from Newcastle to collect it.

Maggie joins the family

The van was named Maggie after its previous owner, Maggie McDonald, and when the Royale arrived back at the Lowery’s home, the work began.

A total rebuild was carried out, because standing out in all weathers for 40 years had taken its toll on the tourer.

New framing was required along with a respray, plus the original Alde heating and the soft furnishings were in a poor state. It was going to be a labour of love!

The Royale story

The company began manufacturing its luxury tourers in 1969 and was set up in Gloucester by several personnel from Safari Caravans (another luxury maker).

By the end of that year they had built their first van, a two-berth Royale at 3.83m long and priced for the 1970 season at £750, a fair sum back then.

Using a GRP roof and end panels, the Royale was distinctive and soon these hand-built luxury caravans had found their niche in the prestige market. The spec was high, with flued gas heaters, slatted bed bases and side gas lockers.

Royales were soon winning prestigious awards and other models were added over the years. Which is where Chris Lowery’s Royale comes in.

At the 1975 Earls Court show the latest Tourcruiser was launched, a super-luxury, double-dinette family model. Few would be built, which makes Chris’s van even more special.

Royale, though, also expanded into other markets, and in 1975 the firm launched its lower-cost Windsor range, which was built in Beverley, near Hull.

Royale also launched the Coronet, another GRP-constructed and more contemporary-looking clubman touring range that cost £45,000 (in 1977) to develop. In addition, there was the entry-level range named Fiesta.

Keeping the brand alive!

By the early ’80s the economic downturn had caused the firm to fall by the wayside, and by June 1983 the Royale company was no more.

However, the owners’ club that had formed in 1971 remained in operation – and it is still going strong in 2017.

Not many Royales were made, but they do still turn up and are now seen as true classics, sought-after vintage caravans.

Chris has been a mainstay in keeping these tourers on the road, which has meant that some have had to be used as donors to keep better examples running.

Royales turn up abroad, too, having been exported far and wide.

For the love of a vintage caravan

Back to Chris and his Royale Tourcruiser rebuild, which necessitated months of hard work.

The electrics were replaced, the gas system was checked over and the heating was sorted with the help of Alde.

New framing was made and the upholstery was re-covered by Christine with a tartan flavour, a nod to the van’s previous owner being Scottish.

The Lowerys wanted it to be ready for the 45th Royale Owners’ Club meet, which meant plenty of hard graft, and sourcing some parts proved time-consuming.

A full restoration job

Rebuilding the framework and stripping back the paint all took time. Then, of course, once it was in bits, the whole thing had to be put back together.

With determination the project moved on, and there were regular progress reports on the Royale Caravans Facebook page. Where possible, Chris tried to keep all of the van’s fittings original.

Eventually, with all the final work completed, we visited Chris and Christine at their favourite site, Moss House Farm in Wrightington, Lancashire.

In fact, a number of Royales are stored at this site because the owners are also fans of the brand, with several models under their belts.

Classic appeal

The Royale is a class act with its distinctive looks and charm – this was an era when the UK still had several luxury hand-built makes, most of which would be gone by the early ’80s.

The Lowerys’ Royale takes you back to a time when you had to ask a stern- looking salesman if you wanted to take a peek inside the van at a show, and you’d only be allowed in if you were genuinely interested in making a purchase!

This now-vintage caravan is a perfect example of a craftsman-built tourer, and other caravanners’ heads would certainly turn as you pitched up on site.

A wonderful, worthwhile project, it looks set to live on as a piece of caravanning history.

It was launched in 1976 for the grand sum of more than £6000!

Andy Jenkinson

Andy has been contributing to Practical Caravan and Practical Motorhome for 25 years. He is an expert on the UK caravan industry and has 13 books published, with another four due in 2022. One of the UK’s leading caravan/motorhome historians, he has been a caravanner since 1969, when he went on tour with his parents in an Elddis Tornado and a Ford Cortina 1600E tow car. Andy regularly tests new and used tourers and has also written company profiles for Swift, Adria, Coachman, Bailey, Lunar, Bessacarr and Willerby. He currently owns a Skoda Karoq 4x4 Tdi and Bailey Ranger GT60 500 .

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The Birth of the Tour de France

By: Christopher Klein

Updated: May 8, 2023 | Original: June 28, 2013

On July 1, 1903, 60 men mounted their bicycles outside the Café au Reveil Matin in the Parisian suburb of Montgeron. The five-dozen riders were mostly French, with just a sprinkle of Belgians, Swiss, Germans and Italians. A third were professionals sponsored by bicycle manufacturers, the others were simply devotees of the sport. All 60 wheelmen, however, were united by the challenge of embarking on an unprecedented test of endurance—not to mention the 20,000 francs in prize money—in the inaugural Tour de France.

At 3:16 p.m., the cyclists turned the pedals of their bicycles and raced into the unknown.

Nothing like the Tour de France had ever been attempted before. Journalist Geo Lefevre had dreamt up the fanciful race as a stunt to boost the circulation of his struggling daily sports newspaper, L’Auto. Henri Desgrange, the director-editor of L’Auto and a former champion cyclist himself, loved the idea of turning France into one giant velodrome. They developed a 1,500-mile clockwise loop of the country running from Paris to Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes before returning to the French capital. There were no Alpine climbs and only six stages—as opposed to the 21 stages in the 2013 Tour— but the distances covered in each of them were monstrous, an average of 250 miles. (No single stage in the 2013 Tour tops 150 miles.) Between one and three rest days were scheduled between stages for recovery.

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The first stage of the epic race was particularly dastardly. The route from Paris to Lyon stretched nearly 300 miles. No doubt several of the riders who wheeled away from Paris worried not about winning the race—but surviving it.

Unlike today’s riders, the cyclists in 1903 rode over unpaved roads without helmets. They rode as individuals, not team members. Riders could receive no help. They could not glide in the slipstream of fellow riders or vehicles of any kind. They rode without support cars. Cyclists were responsible for making their own repairs. They even rode with spare tires and tubes wrapped around their torsos in case they developed flats.

And unlike modern-day riders, the cyclists in the 1903 Tour de France, forced to cover enormous swathes of land, spent much of the race riding through the night with moonlight the only guide and stars the only spectators. During the early morning hours of the first stage, race officials came across many competitors “riding like sleepwalkers.”

Hour after hour through the night, riders abandoned the race. One of the favorites, Hippolyte Aucouturier, quit after developing stomach cramps, perhaps from the swigs of red wine he took as an early 1900s version of a performance enhancer.

Twenty-three riders abandoned the first stage of the race, but the one man who barreled through the night faster than anyone else was another pre-race favorite, 32-year-old professional Maurice Garin. The mustachioed French national worked as a chimney sweep as a teenager before becoming one of France’s leading cyclists. Caked in mud, the diminutive Garin crossed the finish line in Lyon a little more than 17 hours after the start outside Paris. In spite of the race’s length, he won by only one minute.

“The Little Chimney Sweep” built his lead as the race progressed. By the fifth stage, Garin had a two-hour advantage. When his nearest competitor suffered two flat tires and fell asleep while resting on the side of the road, Garin captured the stage and the Tour was all but won.

The sixth and final stage, the race’s longest, began in Nantes at 9 p.m. on July 18, so that spectators could watch the riders arrive in Paris late the following afternoon. Garin strapped on a green armband to signify his position as race leader. (The famed yellow jersey worn by the race leader was not introduced until 1919.) A crowd of 20,000 in the Parc des Princes velodrome cheered as Garin won the stage and the first Tour de France. He bested butcher trainee Lucien Pothier by nearly three hours in what remains the greatest winning margin in the Tour’s history. Garin had spent more than 95 hours in the saddle and averaged 15 miles per hour. In all, 21 of the 60 riders completed the Tour, with the last-place rider more than 64 hours behind Garin.

For Desgrange, the race was an unqualified success. Newspaper circulation soared six-fold during the race. However, a chronic problem that would perpetually plague the Tour de France was already present in the inaugural race—cheating. The rule-breaking started in the very first stage when Jean Fischer illegally used a car to pace him. Another rider was disqualified in a subsequent stage for riding in a car’s slipstream.

That paled in comparison, however, to the nefarious activity the following year in the 1904 Tour de France. As Garin and a fellow rider pedaled through St. Etienne, fans of hometown rider Antoine Faure formed a human blockade and beat the men until Lefevre arrived and fired a pistol to break up the melee. Later in the race, fans protesting the disqualification of a local rider placed tacks and broken glass on the course. The riders acted a little better. They hitched rides in cars during the dark and illegally took help from outsiders. Garin himself was accused of illegally obtaining food during a portion of one stage. The race was so plagued by scandal that four months later Desgrange disqualified Garin and the three other top finishers. It, of course, wouldn’t be the last time a Tour winner was stripped of his title.

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How Karol G and ‘Fortnite’ Pulled Off Her ‘Fantastical’ In-Game Concert (EXCLUSIVE)

By Katcy Stephan

Katcy Stephan

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Karol G may have wrapped her Mañana Será Bonito Tour in July, but she just made one last important stop: “ Fortnite .”

The “Provenza” hitmaker’s five-part interactive concert debuted Friday afternoon in the massively popular title from Epic Games , bringing her colorful, doodle-filled world to a whole new level.

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Take the opening scene, which thrusts players into a bustling subway train. “The impetus for us bringing to life this subway scene was that Karol rediscovered her love of music and reinvested in her musical career when she was on a subway in New York City,” Levy says.

While the Epic team considered recreating Karol’s tour sets, they opted to use their Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) to create an unmistakably creative virtual experience. “If you attended Karol’s international stadium tour, she performs on a giant shark,” Levy says. “We could have brought to life a shark, and she could have performed on top of it. But the unique thing about ‘Fortnite’ is that we can also do so much more. We can do things that would never have been possible in the physical world.” Cue dozens of neon green sharks swimming through the air as players careen down a wild water slide.

Karol’s in good company as “Fortnite Festival” headliner, joining previous acts The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Metallica. “These different partnerships allow for an increasingly diverse set of fantasies for players,” Levy says. “At this point, ‘Fortnite’ is so much more than a game. It’s an ecosystem of experiences for a variety of different kinds of players who are coming to ‘Fortnite’ to do a variety of different things, whether it’s play ‘Battle Royale,’ playing on the Main Stage or Battle Stage, playing within the wider ‘Fortnite’ ecosystem, or playing ‘Lego Fortnite.'” Or even stream music.

Luminate Data found this year through analysis of select “Fortnite Festival” tracks that the songs showed an average lift of 8.7% in on-demand audio streaming after being announced, with some hits like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and NF’s “The Search” each jumping a whopping 23% . “It means that Fortnite is driving new forms of experience around music, both in the game and off-platform,” Levy says.

“Fortnite Festival,” still in its freshman year, builds on Epic Games’ ability to highlight artists in innovative ways. That’s why Eminem’s longtime manager, Paul Rosenberg, was eager to bring Slim Shady to the platform late last year after seeing Travis Scott’s collaboration with the game. “I started to really pay close attention to it and saw the massive platform that’s inside and the power that it had over fans and players and gamers,” he told Variety in 2023.

“One of my goals for this collaboration was to reach new audiences and offer them an exclusive glimpse into my world,” Karol says. “I’ve been amazed by the incredible response we have seen from fans across the globe. It has been a rewarding experience to receive messages and read on social media how people are discovering my music for the first time and connecting with it. This is a testament of the incredible work that Fortnite has done creating a global community and the rising popularity of Latin music.”

The Epic team is betting that more musicians like Karol will consider “Fortnite” an extension of their artistry. “We’re hoping that our artist partners start to think about ‘Fortnite’ as another place to stop on their tour when they’re thinking about their releases,” Levy says. “How can ‘Fortnite’ play a play an important role in a release cycle?”

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