The author's husband, Tom, and son Ethan in gladiator training.Kelly Grant/The Globe and Mail
If you want your kids to find joy in a history-laden vacation, here’s my advice: Give them swords.
By the time my husband and our three sons reached Rome, the fourth major city on a whirlwind tour of Italy in May, museum-and-monument fatigue had set in.
Our boys, ages 13, 11 and 8, tried to be game as we tromped from one ancient ruin to the next, but their enthusiasm flagged if we toured any site for longer than an hour.
My middle son looked so bored at the halfway mark of a two-hour tour of the Doge’s Palace in Venice that I handed him my phone and asked him to be our official photographer, hoping the job might cheer him up. He proceeded to take pictures of every penis and pair of breasts painted on the palace walls.
The boys’ limited patience for Italian art and history was no surprise to me. I knew when planning our first trip to Europe that I’d have to find activities that appealed to my triumvirate of sporty boys. Gruppo Storico Romano, which runs the Italian capital’s only gladiator school, fit the bill like a sword belt on Russell Crowe.
Founded 30 years ago as a Roman historical society that staged gladiator shows, the club has for years offered ancient fighting lessons. Between 8,000 and 10,000 people visit the school annually, according to founder Sergio Iacomoni. He goes by the name President Nero, a nod to the mad emperor who ruled from 54 to 68 AD.
Our afternoon at gladiator school began with an Uber ride down the Appian Way, an ancient thoroughfare that was once one of the most strategically important roads in the world.
The Appian Way.ALBERTO PIZZOLI/Getty Images
The school is located on a stretch that is within the boundaries of modern Rome, but far enough away from the major tourist neighbourhoods that it wasn’t easy for us to reach by foot or public transit. Don’t be fooled by some of the third-party tour brokers that advertise gladiator classes with pictures of the colosseum. Gruppo Storico’s school isn’t near the ancient stadium, let alone inside it.
After we arrived, Eliana Camilletti invited us inside Gruppo Storico’s gladiator museum. Camilletti’s gladiatrix name was Astrea and she would be our Lanista – an owner and trainer of gladiators.
Unlike the other museums we visited in Italy, this one encouraged participation. The boys and my husband donned beige and maroon tunics with ropes for belts. They tried on helmets of all shapes and sizes, including ones topped with feathery plumage. They hefted shields and lifted swords to see which would strike the surest blow.
The costumes and weapons they tested were replicas, some of them fashioned by Iacomoni. Some struck me as chintzy after seeing relics elsewhere in Italy that were thousands of years old. Curious children, not adult history buffs, are the school’s target audience. Iacomoni acknowledged as much when he said, through a translator, that he had toyed with the idea of opening a gladiator school in Orlando.
“The most important thing for us is that the kids will play along together with their parents, which is not very common nowadays because we are all busy,” he said.
For our family, the real fun began when Astrea took us to the outdoor training grounds. As a warm-up, she led the group through an obstacle course that had the boys ducking under ropes, dodging swinging sandbags and doing push-ups. “If you want to be a gladiator, you have to practise,” Astrea shouted.
Then, out came the wooden swords. Astrea divided the group into pairs and broke down each movement. “Now,” she said, “we are going to hit the heads of our enemy.” She demonstrated how to swing a sword in a broad arc terminating at an opponent’s forehead, and how to turn a sword horizontally to fend off such a blow.
Although the wooden weapons looked more like thin paddles than swords, they could have done some real damage if wielded in competition.
That’s why, when it came time to move to a wooden amphitheatre for a gladiatorial bout, Astrea handed out swords that looked like foam baseball bats wrapped in duct tape. I’m not certain what they were made of because I never held one. I volunteered for the role of empress. I settled myself on an elevated chaise lounge and prepared to judge the fledgling gladiators.
The final gladiator battles were a giddy free-for-all. Astrea paired fighters of similar sizes and sent them into the ring. Dramatic music swelled over speakers. Every time a gladiator was struck, he had to behave as though he’d lost a limb, which left combatants hopping on one foot or fighting with one useless, dangling arm. The kids heckled each other. They made elaborate scenes of their deaths.
Later, after Astrea presented each participant with a certificate to commemorate their graduation from gladiator school, I found a wall plastered with photos of celebrities who’ve visited Gruppo Storico’s school over the years: Joan Rivers, Diane Keaton, Tom Brady, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Shakira. One featured a bushy-bearded Russell Crowe engulfed by a crowd of costumed gladiators.
Thanks to Crowe’s 2000 movie – a sequel to which is being released in November – and our afternoon at gladiator school, my boys were more engaged than I expected during a subsequent tour of the Colosseum. Swords really are a secret weapon when it comes to touring Italy with kids.
If you go
Tickets for a two-hour gladiator class put on by Gruppo Storico Romano start at €120 a person (about $180). For information, visit romegladiatorschool.com/gladiator-school
The writer was a guest of Gruppo Storico Romano. It did not review or approve this article.