The Flavian Ampitheatre in Pozzuoli is the third largest in Italy. It's nearly 2,000 years old, was abandoned during the middle ages after the eruption of the nearby Solfatara volcano, and is closed on Tuesdays.

The Coliseum of Tomb Raider Anniversary (2007) is an update of the Colosseum level from the original Tomb Raider (1996). Both stages are set in Greece and can be reached through the ruins of a monastery called St. Francis' Folly. The Coliseum appears to have been built underground, though daylight penetrates through a void in its coffered ceiling, similar to the dome of the Pantheon.

A and I visited the Ampitheatre on a daytrip from our base in Naples, on the one day of the week when it's off limits to the public. On the advice of a local, we slipped in from the roadside. Broken and felled pillars and rough-cut stone teeth were heaped up around the perimeter.

Multiple entrances offered themselves to us, some leading to the interior seating, others to the lower levels, where wild animals and combatants would have been penned. Sagging, half-hearted barriers suggested that some areas were intended to be permanently off-limits, including the tunnel we eventually followed.

In the deepest ring of the Ampitheatre, still more fragments of column - Corinthian or Composite - some laid on their side, some at an angle, and dust-gloomed visitor information boards long since retired. Skylights in the arched ceiling let in enough light to turn the stone white and blue.

At ground level, some of the original chiselled Latin signage remained, though broken and reinforced by modern metal frames, while stairs permitted access to the upper areas of seating. A and I avoided going out into the open in case for fear of making ourselves too obvious - we had earlier spotted at least one car parked behind the locked entrance, and what looked like a security office. So we lingered at various entrances, lightly veiled in shadow, taking in the view of the arena.

Fire hoses had also been installed at some point, though they seemed a little worse for wear, loosely ravelled in open-fronted metal boxes with rusted lids, their plumbing cobwebbed. In the darkest nooks, partially disfigured statues had been stored away, along with further visitor information boards.

Our exit was a little more hurried than we had intended. We spotted a man in blue shirt, seated and smoking, near the point of our ingress, and, thinking he was lying in wait for us, fled to a locked gate at the top a steep flight of steps strewn with autumnal debris. The street being at a lower level on one side of the fence than the other, we jumped from an uncomfortable height, A jarring one foot so badly that she needed painkillers to sleep, and was forced to visit a Neopolitan hospital the following day on crutches.

I entered Tomb Raider Anniversary's Coliseum without realising, at first, where I was, and was immediately set upon by a pair of large male gorillas with eyes like bright pinholes.

How they survived down there, without food of any real abundance, I don't know. I later investigated the pens, replete with cages, and found only sand and stone. Even more of a mystery was the sudden appearance, a short time later, of four carnivores - lionesses, by the look of it.

Compared to the Ampitheatre, the Coliseum was largely exterior. The lower levels were sparse, not following the ring shape of the seating but leading to dead ends, cave-ins or exits. I followed one such tunnel to its conclusion and discovered human remains atop one of the animal cages.

The perimeter was similarly strewn with ruined, fluted columns, however, though I'm not sure of what type. Those that were still mostly intact were horizontally scarred, which allowed me to climb up on to them and get a better view of the beautifully bare arena, as well as the coffered ceiling, lanced by dusty light.

Some of these columns looked dangerously unstable, liable to collapse if they were so much as breathed on.

The best views were afforded to me by clambering into what I presume would have been the royal box (or its equivalent), and then grappling across various part-fallen-away roofs. Throughout my exploration, the statues and murals I encountered were largely in immaculate condition, the lever-operated iron gates in perfect working order.