The Colosseum was not called the Colosseum when it was built. Its official name was the Flavian Amphitheater — the Amphitheatrum Flavium — after the dynasty that commissioned and completed it. The name we use derives from a colossal bronze statue of Nero that stood nearby, a work of imperial self-aggrandizement that survived its subject by centuries. The building itself is formally anonymous, which is fitting for a structure whose purpose was to direct attention outward, toward the spectacle it contained, rather than inward toward the men who paid for it.