Details
Founded: 12th centuryCategory: Religious sites in Sweden
Historical period: Consolidation (Sweden)
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Ala Church was originally built in the 12th century as so-called apse chapel, a small round building. The tower and present apsis were added around 1250. The interior was destroyed by fire in 1938. Some frescos were restored later. The limestone font, made in the mid-1200s, survived from fire and the pulpit (1663) was moved from Björke Church.
References:Built around AD 90 to entertain the legionaries stationed at the fort of Caerleon (Isca), the impressive amphitheatre was the Roman equivalent of today’s multiplex cinema. Wooden benches provided seating for up to 6,000 spectators, who would gather to watch bloodthirsty displays featuring gladiatorial combat and exotic wild animals.
Long after the Romans left, the amphitheatre took on a new life in Arthurian legend. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the somewhat imaginative 12th-century scholar, wrote in his History of the Kings of Britain that Arthur was crowned in Caerleon and that the ruined amphitheatre was actually the remains of King Arthur’s Round Table.
Today it is the most complete Roman amphitheatre in Britain.
