How many days did the Colosseum's inaugural games last?

The Colosseum’s inaugural games lasted about 100 days. Emperor Titus staged the celebrations in AD 80, marking the completion of the Flavian Amphitheatre begun by his father, Vespasian.

The opening programme was extraordinarily varied. It included gladiatorial contests, animal hunts, public executions, dramatic re-enactments and elaborate spectacles featuring animals imported from across the Roman Empire. The poet Martial recorded some of the events in his collection known as De Spectaculis, while Suetonius and Cassius Dio supplied additional accounts.

The figure is often described as “more than one hundred days,” so 100 days is a rounded quiz answer rather than a precise modern timetable. Ancient sources do not provide a complete day-by-day schedule, and some details remain debated, including how certain water spectacles were staged. The games also differed from the regular contests later held in the arena: they were a massive inauguration intended to display imperial generosity and restore public favour after disasters during Titus’s early reign.