---
title: "Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3 - Pompeii Online"
description: "The Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3 housed and trained a gladiatorial community before the AD 62 earthquake, as shown by about 120 inscriptions and graffiti."
url: "https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places/regio-v/gladiators-barracks-v-5-3"
date: "2026-09-16T12:43:00+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3

The **Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3**, in Pompeii’s Regio V, is especially important for understanding the world of the fighters who performed in the Amphitheatre.

Before the earthquake of AD 62, the complex served as the **headquarters and training ground of a gladiatorial community**, as shown by the exceptionally large number of gladiatorial inscriptions and graffiti found on its walls. It should not be confused with the better-known **Quadriporticus of the Theatres** in Regio VIII, which was converted into gladiatorial barracks only at a later stage. At different points in its history, Pompeii therefore had more than one building connected with the gladiatorial world.

### A building constructed in the 1st century BC

The Gladiators’ Barracks was built around the middle of the **1st century BC**. It was arranged around a large **rectangular peristyle with 24 columns**: eight stood along each of the longer sides and four along each of the shorter sides, creating a spacious central courtyard surrounded by a portico.

Numerous rooms serving different purposes opened off the peristyle. The complex was therefore far more elaborate than a simple exercise ground, and included living quarters, reception rooms and service areas.

### Gladiators in Pompeii

Gladiatorial combats were among the most popular spectacles in Roman Pompeii. The city possessed one of the oldest masonry amphitheatres in the Roman world, built around 70 BC, while painted notices on building façades show how frequently games were held.

Gladiators might be enslaved people, prisoners, convicted criminals or free men who had voluntarily chosen this occupation. They did not enter combat without preparation: they underwent **specialised training**, learning to use different weapons and techniques according to their particular class. Behind the spectacle in the arena lay a highly organised system of training, discipline and administration.

### The 120 gladiatorial inscriptions

The most compelling evidence linking the building with gladiators consists of approximately **120 gladiatorial inscriptions and graffiti** discovered inside it. Names, references to combats and other traces of the arena world were scratched into the walls. These inscriptions enabled archaeologists to identify the complex as gladiatorial premises in use before its conversion during the city’s final years.

The graffiti are especially valuable because they provide a very different kind of evidence from official inscriptions, preserving names and marks left directly by those who lived, worked in or visited the complex.

### The great peristyle

The heart of the building was the large colonnaded courtyard. Its 24 columns formed a covered walkway around the central open space. Low walls were subsequently built between the columns, some of which retained painted decoration.

The images included **hunting scenes and mythological subjects**, among them **Europa on the bull**. These paintings show that, despite its gladiatorial function, the complex was carefully decorated. The courtyard could have accommodated various daily activities and probably some aspects of training as well.

### Reception rooms

Rooms of greater size and quality also opened onto the peristyle. These included **triclinia and exedrae**, spaces more usually associated with prestigious private houses. The triclinium at the rear preserves **Third Style** wall paintings and a mosaic floor.

Such features make clear that the building was neither a simple military installation nor a kind of prison. The gladiatorial community had its own organisation and access to spaces used for meals, meetings and collective activities.

### Living quarters

Several rooms on the southern side were used as living quarters. It is impossible to determine with complete certainty which were occupied by individual gladiators and which served other purposes, but the complex as a whole was designed to accommodate its residents for extended periods.

The popular image of a gladiator permanently confined in a tiny cell does not therefore necessarily describe conditions in Pompeii’s first gladiatorial barracks. The gladiatorial world was far more varied and included fighters of differing legal status and prestige.

### The stable

A **stable** was added in a second phase. The animals may have served the needs of the building and the activities of its occupants, and their presence provides further evidence that the complex was repeatedly adapted over time. Like many Pompeian buildings, the Gladiators’ Barracks did not retain an unchanging form, but was modified in response to the requirements of those who used it.

### Famous gladiators

Gladiators could become genuine public celebrities. Pompeii’s walls preserve many names accompanied by the number of victories achieved in the arena, and some graffiti record the admiration inspired by particular fighters.

A gladiator’s fame could therefore extend far beyond the Amphitheatre. Spectators knew the fighters, followed their victories and looked forward to contests advertised on the city’s walls. The many graffiti in the barracks place this building directly within that popular culture.

### The riot of AD 59

One of the most dramatic events in the history of Pompeian entertainment occurred in **AD 59**. During games held in the Amphitheatre, a violent riot broke out between **Pompeians and Nucerians**. The historian Tacitus relates that insults gave way to stones and eventually to weapons, leaving many Nucerians dead or injured.

The severity of the incident prompted the Roman Senate to intervene. Pompeii was temporarily banned from holding gladiatorial spectacles, and several associations were dissolved.

### The end of the barracks

A few years after the riot, the Gladiators’ Barracks in Regio V **ceased to serve its original purpose**. After the earthquake of AD 62, the building was extensively altered and converted into a **private residence**.

It has been suggested that this change was also connected with the dissolution of gladiatorial associations following the disturbances of AD 59. The connection is plausible, but cannot be demonstrated with complete certainty. What is known is that the building no longer functioned as gladiatorial barracks in the final years before the eruption.

### A house in place of the barracks

Conversion into a house entailed substantial changes. Areas previously used by the gladiatorial community were adapted to the needs of a **large private residence**; parts of the peristyle were altered, and the surrounding rooms acquired more clearly domestic functions.

This transformation is one of the building’s most interesting features. The same structure records two entirely different periods of Pompeian life: first a place connected with gladiatorial spectacles, and later a private home.

### The new barracks by the theatres

When this complex ceased to be used by gladiators, another building in the city assumed that function. Behind the **Large Theatre** in Regio VIII stood an enormous quadriporticus originally intended for theatre-goers. After the earthquake of AD 62, the **Quadriporticus of the Theatres VIII.7.16** was reorganised and converted into gladiatorial barracks, with accommodation, service rooms and areas for the new gladiatorial community.

The two buildings must therefore be distinguished: the **Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3** is the earlier complex, used by fighters before the earthquake, whereas the **Quadriporticus of the Theatres VIII.7.16** was the later gladiatorial headquarters occupied during the city’s final years.

### The Amphitheatre and the barracks

The existence of buildings specifically intended for gladiators shows how important this form of entertainment was to Pompeii. The Amphitheatre could accommodate thousands of spectators from both the city and the surrounding area, and staging combats therefore required infrastructure far more complex than the arena alone.

Gladiators had to be housed, fed and trained, while weapons and equipment had to be stored and maintained. The barracks in Regio V offers a glimpse of this world behind the scenes.

### Training and discipline

Gladiatorial training was extremely rigorous. Different classes of fighter used specific equipment and had to master techniques suited to their particular weapons, under the supervision of specialist trainers.

Combat in the arena was therefore not an improvised struggle, but a highly codified form of spectacle in which the audience immediately recognised the participants’ weapons, techniques and classes. Success depended on physical preparation, experience and the ability to fight according to the prescribed rules.

### Enslaved and free men

Gladiators did not all share the same social status. Many were enslaved people, prisoners of war or convicted criminals, but free men could also choose voluntarily to become gladiators. Successful fighters might win substantial prizes, and a particularly distinguished enslaved gladiator could hope to gain his freedom.

The symbol of freedom granted to a gladiator was the *rudis*, a wooden sword signifying the end of his obligation to fight. The gladiatorial world was thus marked by a profound contradiction: men who were socially marginal or deprived of freedom could at the same time become famous before thousands of spectators.

### The excavations

The Gladiators’ Barracks was explored in numerous campaigns. The principal investigations took place in **1842**, between **1890 and 1899**, in **1905**, in **1947**, and again in **2004–2005**.

These excavations gradually made it possible to reconstruct the building’s successive phases and, in particular, its transition from a gladiatorial to a residential function. The graffiti played a crucial role in identifying the earlier phase: without this evidence scratched into the walls, the presence of the gladiatorial community would be far more difficult to recognise.

### Two barracks, two periods in Pompeii’s history

The existence of two buildings commonly called the **Gladiators’ Barracks** can easily cause confusion, but together they document an important change during the city’s final decades. The Regio V barracks belongs to the earlier phase and was later converted into a house. The Regio VIII quadriporticus, originally built as a space associated with the Large Theatre, became the barracks used after the earthquake.

Viewed together, the two complexes allow us to trace the transfer and reorganisation of Pompeii’s gladiatorial community.

### Behind the spectacle of the arena

The **Gladiators’ Barracks V.5.3** reveals an aspect of Pompeii that the Amphitheatre alone cannot convey. The arena presents the setting of the spectacle; the barracks, by contrast, allows us to reconstruct something of the life that preceded it: **training, accommodation, relationships among the fighters and daily organisation**.

The 120 gladiatorial inscriptions also make this building one of the most important sources of evidence for the physical presence of gladiators in the city. Although less monumental than the Amphitheatre, the Regio V barracks is therefore fundamental to understanding gladiatorial culture in Roman Pompeii.

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