PRESS RELEASE: 10276 – LEGO® Colosseum

[Ecclesiastes]

10276 – LEGO® Colosseum

●        499.99 EUR/ 449.99 GBP/ 549.99 USD/ 649.99 CAD/749.99 AUD

●        Aged 18+

●        9,036 pieces

●        Product available direct from LEGO.com and from LEGO Stores from 27th November

This Black Friday, LEGO® fans can take home a piece of history and re-create Rome’s most iconic landmark, with the awe-inspiring new LEGO Colosseum set. Made up of 9,036 pieces, this is not only the largest LEGO brick set launched to date (taking the title from the LEGO® Star Wars™ Millennium Falcon) it’s also been expertly designed to mimic the incredible architecture of the original Roman amphitheatre, making it a building project to savour and a set to marvel at.

Both LEGO fans and History buffs need to look no further than their living room to experience a taste of Italian history, as this LEGO brick model is a truly authentic LEGO brick recreation of the mighty Colosseum – featuring many true-to-life details to help builders accurately bring this famous building to life. This epic LEGO model features a recreation of the three distinct stories from the Colosseum, with each of these stories adorned with the columns of the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian orders. These columns have been faithfully recreated in LEGO brick form using a variety of creative building techniques, including decorative volutes that have been created using a recoloured LEGO roller skate element that has been turned upside down to create an authentic look.

Every detail of the set has been meticulously crafted to stay true to the real-life Colosseum – including having 80 ‘ribs’ in the spectator stands (the exact same number as the original) and having three different shades of brick to replicate the different columns and aging of the almost 2,000 year old landmark. The build experience has even been expertly created to match the same process as the original, with the “wooden” LEGO arena being the last build to be placed on the LEGO model, as it has been in the 1990s. As well as being a challenging build, this model is truly a breath-taking focal point for any room. The LEGO Colosseum rests on an oval base, allowing this phenomenal 360-degree display piece to be shown off from any angle. Builders can then choose which side of this magnificent LEGO Brick recreation of one of Rome’s most visited landmarks they display – whether that’s the southern side of the building, which has been destroyed by various earthquakes and natural disasters over the years, or the more complete northern wall. Colosseum features arches, that have been recreated with LEGO brick detailing, allowing a view into the centre of the Colosseum from the outside, just like its real-life counterpart.

 

The set was designed by Rok Zgalin Kobe who commented:

” One of the biggest challenges and one of the most important things was to convey the Colosseum’s monumentality in the LEGO form. I felt that the LEGO model should display a special architectural feature of the original – the rows of columns flanking the arches in different styles. To achieve that, the model is constructed using an effect of vertical exaggeration. The cross-section is therefore far steeper than on the real structure. Hopefully, people will be inspired to learn more about the original through the experience of building the LEGO model.”

The LEGO Colosseum measures over 10.5” (27cm) high, 20.5” (52cm) wide and 23.5” (59cm) deep making this a spectacular centre piece for any LEGO brick collection.

The set will launch on 27th November, on Black Friday, as part of the LEGO Stores and LEGO.com Black Friday offerings. LEGO VIP members who purchase the exclusive model during the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend will receive a limited-edition gift with purchase, a Roman Chariot, which can be displayed alongside the Colosseum.

 

 

[Terrasher]

Woooah 650CAD! I was expecting something closer to 750 - 800CAD, so this is a welcome surprise! Gonna be hitting the store on release, then.

The question is: how popular might this set be? It's not licensed, cheap or with minifigures - so should we expect queues for it on the morning of the 27th? 

[JintaiZ]

It's a really nice set!! While it isn't 100% accurate, it still looks instantly recognizable and the designer captured the main details very well.

Edited January 19, 2021 by JintaiZ

[Itaria No Shintaku]

Take it from me.
I have lived in Rome for 39 years.
This is ugly
I am not an AFOL, I am a LEGO Enthusiast. I love LEGO. I wrote three LEGO books. I have a page in which I talk about LEGO daily.

And believe me, this is a very big letdown. 
I will never buy this set. 
It's like a parisien person that says you that he would never buy the Tour Eiffel.

And the GWP is the most ugly GWP I've ever seen. Brickbuilt horses, a MEDIEVAL helmet?

Sorry, I've been praising LEGO all days, but this is really UGLY.

[Robert8]

The GWP looks like an 80s set

[JGW3000]

57 minutes ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

I have lived in Rome for 39 years.
This is ugly

Itaria - I can appreciate your impression as you have first hand knowledge with the real building. It would be helpful for those of us thinking about buying this set what your specific criticisms are - color? size? brick selection? other?  I've seen the Colosseum once for maybe several hours, about 15 years ago, so I am not in a great position to make specific complaints.

[Ecclesiastes]

I like the set, but I'm not blown away. I see it as good tan castle parts pack. Now waiting for the right price. The GWP got me excited, but I'll wait now:

 

1 hour ago, Robert8 said:

The GWP looks like an 80s set

Yes... Sure a let down. Compared to the gift with the batmobile last year, which was also a Black Friday Release, this is an abomination... My 5 year old nephew could do better.

 

[koalayummies]

Candle stick, minifigure roller skate and and tile round bar pin in Sand Yellow.

New colors:

https://www.newelementary.com/2020/11/lego-10276-colosseum-parts-creator-expert.html

[Itaria No Shintaku]

1 hour ago, JGW3000 said:

Itaria - I can appreciate your impression as you have first hand knowledge with the real building. It would be helpful for those of us thinking about buying this set what your specific criticisms are - color? size? brick selection? other?  I've seen the Colosseum once for maybe several hours, about 15 years ago, so I am not in a great position to make specific complaints.

No problem.
First of all, it totally looks the wrong scale. When you live in Rome and you see it twice per day, you can acnowledge that it's quite different. It's strechted. They made it less larger/wide than tall. It's too tall, or it's too narrow, whatever you want to put it. This is really problematic to me. It seems a different monument.
Then the actual Coliseum is not tan. Ok, that's not white either, but surely not tan. And there are also DARK TAN pieces. That doesn't work.
The GWP is one of the ugliest thing I have ever seen, but that's free at least.
There are bricklbuilt horses like in the Yellow castle and there is a "Roman" wearing a MEDIEVAL HELMET? 
Seriously...

[henrysunset]

I had the good fortune of receiving an advance preview copy of the new set.  I wanted to share a few highlights from my review of this massive new set!

The first surprise for me was that the box is actually 25% smaller than that of the UCS Millennium Falcon, even though it has 20% more parts.  I was similarly surprised by the huge price difference, with the Colosseum coming in at about 30% cheaper than the Falcon.

#10276 Colosseum includes 20% more parts, a 25% smaller box, and a 30% lower cost (versus #75192 Millennium Falcon).

 

The second surprise was how satisfying it actually was to build. To be honest, I found the prospect of a 9000+ piece set a bit daunting, especially given how repetitive the model looked like it would be.  Now, I don't want to say that it isn't repetitive (it definitely is), but It is extremely satisfying to build a huge module of seating, and snap it into place on the base.  In fact, the building techniques used in the model are quite clever and satisfying.

 

The set includes a number of existing parts in new colors, most notably 16x16x 1⅓ Brick w/ Technic Pins (part 65803) introduced in the LEGO Art series in Olive Green.

I was also pleased to see a few popular new parts available in new colors for the first time.  This includes the Olive Green part in the photo above, plus three parts in the very useful Dark Tan color.

 

I've included a step-by-step look at the entire review process in my review at brickarchitect.com - check it out!

 

---Tom

 

[MAB]

3 hours ago, Terrasher said:

Woooah 650CAD! I was expecting something closer to 750 - 800CAD, so this is a welcome surprise! Gonna be hitting the store on release, then.

The question is: how popular might this set be? It's not licensed, cheap or with minifigures - so should we expect queues for it on the morning of the 27th? 

Probably not, at least not for this.

I imagine many of the people that do decide to buy it will buy online.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

They made it less larger/wide than tall. It's too tall, or it's too narrow, whatever you want to put it. This is really problematic to me. It seems a different monument.
 

The designer does talk about this, which in reality probably means that the bits they have were the wrong size and to scale the building to make them the right size would make it much bigger than what it currently is.

Remember sometimes uses words that are barely true (such as "playable piano").

"Every detail of the set has been meticulously crafted to stay true to the real-life Colosseum.

...

To achieve that, the model is constructed using an effect of vertical exaggeration. The cross-section is therefore far steeper than on the real structure."

Every detail is made to stay true to the real life one, except of course the details that don't.

[TeriXeri]

Impressive model for sure, microscale isn't my thing but still looks nice.

I could see some interesting alternate builds like Castles come from this however.

Edited November 13, 2020 by TeriXeri

[Itaria No Shintaku]

39 minutes ago, MAB said:

Every detail is made to stay true to the real life one, except of course the details that don't.

That's it.
And it should have been white. Or "very light bluish gray" to say the least. It is not tan. Not *dark tan* either.
It feels totally wrong, that's good news I'm gonna save 500€, which is a good thing.

I said elsewhere: all roman people I know, I am in a roman LUG with dozens of people aren't buying this.
It's like people living in Manchester that won't buy the Old Trafford.

This is the first time since years that LEGO failed me totally on all points. If I will ever get one of those it would be just to part-out it on bricklink.

[Ecclesiastes]

2 hours ago, henrysunset said:

The first surprise for me was that the box is actually 25% smaller than that of the UCS Millennium Falcon, even though it has 20% more parts.  I was similarly surprised by the huge price difference, with the Colosseum coming in at about 30% cheaper than the Falcon.

It has a lot of small and also similar parts so that explains the smaller box as well. Also, the MF is licensed(plus a bunch of licensed minifigs) which makes it also more expensive even if it has less parts.

I like the comparison of the two boxes though, gives a good impression of the size. And I didn't expect boxart on the inner boxes!

 

[Lion King]

This Coloseseum set brought me some memories of my study aboard in Italy. Buon tempo! 

I found it funny - Fiat 500 set’s painting shows us the Roman Colosseum in plain sight. How clever!

Archiecture and size are marvelous. But...I”m not exactly blown away. Why?? The tan colors. It’s not correct colors for Colosseum. It looks like it was built a few years ago instead of thousand years. 

 

[TheLegoDr]

I'm surprised at the hate. This thing is gorgeous. Too expensive for my taste, so I won't be able to get it. But it looks spot on.

I realize I've never seen it in person. I'm going off of pictures only. But when you type in Colosseum in google and find a picture with multiple cars outside of it that are white, you can clearly see this is a TAN structure. I can understand why they chose the colors they did.

Either way, we all have our own opinions, so I'm not going to argue about color choices.

I think the set looks great and I would love to buy it if I could.

[Lucarex]

7 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

Take it from me.
I have lived in Rome for 39 years.
This is ugly
I am not an AFOL, I am a LEGO Enthusiast. I love LEGO. I wrote three LEGO books. I have a page in which I talk about LEGO daily.

And believe me, this is a very big letdown. 
I will never buy this set. 
It's like a parisien person that says you that he would never buy the Tour Eiffel.

And the GWP is the most ugly GWP I've ever seen. Brickbuilt horses, a MEDIEVAL helmet?

Sorry, I've been praising LEGO all days, but this is really UGLY.

I have exactly the same gut response. It just leaves me cold, complete indifference. Looks like it’ll be a borefest to build also. Then again, I suppose that just mirrors my opinion of the real life “tourist attraction”. 

Alternatively, I’d have loved to have seen a Creator Expert/18+ size Fontana di Trevi, as the small Architecture set remains one of my favourites.

Edited November 13, 2020 by Lucarex

[howitzer]

36 minutes ago, TheLegoDr said:

I'm surprised at the hate. This thing is gorgeous. Too expensive for my taste, so I won't be able to get it. But it looks spot on.

I realize I've never seen it in person. I'm going off of pictures only. But when you type in Colosseum in google and find a picture with multiple cars outside of it that are white, you can clearly see this is a TAN structure. I can understand why they chose the colors they did.

Either way, we all have our own opinions, so I'm not going to argue about color choices.

I think the set looks great and I would love to buy it if I could.

I thought about this too. Of course the colour isn't exactly accurate and major part of how the Colosseum looks nowdays comes from the damaged and eroded walls and arcades, something that's next to impossible to replicate in Lego. The real colour also seems to vary a lot depending on which part you look at and how are the lighting conditions (which of course affects the model too) so I find the criticism on colour a bit odd. I also feel that, at least by looking at various photos of the real thing, tan is very much close enough to be the correct colour choice here.

As for more general commentary, I was initially curious about it, and for me it seems to be a very well executed model but at the same time somehow disappointing, and it's hard to put a finger on why. I read the New Elementary's review and it hilighted some minor issues but they are such that I don't really mind. I feel it might have worked better with a square base, though I understand the choice of oval base as that provides more interesting build and reduces footprint. At first the price seemed to be surprisingly low, but that's explained by the multitude of small elements with relatively low amount of lots and lack of license/minifigures. It would probably still be a great parts pack for castle builders (something I'm interested in) but I don't think I'm able to spend this much of money on it, especially when I'm not that interested in keeping sets built on display, except select few. The repetitiveness of the build is to be expected, as there's simply no way to make such a model without it being repetitive.

Someone with too much money should probably buy two sets and do a "restoration" to build the model like it was in its glory days.

[brimbolet]

The building materials for the Amphitheater were Roman concrete, yellow tuff and travertine stone, in various shades of color, so I don't think that tan bricks are such a terrible choice after all - though certainly not spot on. I'm more surprised that Lego actually chose the Colosseum for their biggest set at all. It was a masterpiece of Roman engineering for sure, the ancestor of all our modern stadiums (with a rather grim history) and is a great tourist icon, but as a ruin it doesn't fit into the Architecture theme somehow. The Roman Pantheon or Palladio's Villa Rotonda, both with their huge influence on architecture for the following centuries, would have been a much better choice in my eyes.

Edited November 13, 2020 by brimbolet

[Toastie]

9 hours ago, Ecclesiastes said:

499.99 EUR

 

4 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

It feels totally wrong

I "have been there" - only once so far - and I do share @Itaria No Shintaku's notion. To be honest, it took my breath away. Entirely. Not from the outside, not from the structure - that was simply unbelievable - but because of what it was built for. What the purpose was. What happened there.

Not that is has to be completely accurate at any rate, but at €500, the going gets tough, imho.

"Been there" means: "Saw" it, walked around there - and then left. It was ... incomprehensible. Maybe such places should not be the #1 target of TLG's 18+ program. History tells us what happened there - and why. Sure - it is all education. And history. But then: Doing the bizarre dance on the Technic Osprey and then celebrate the Colosseum as if it were just that, an 18+ set ... well. Who is actually in charge at TLG's headquarters to gauge these things? Do they? Or should they?

Oh well.

€500. Glad, that selected societies can actually be an "identified target market" for such a sets/cost. They have certainly carefully balanced that.

@Itaria No Shintaku: (Literally) walking around in Rome (for endless hours) made me feel ... much, much smaller than I ever felt. It was an experience I >never< want to miss.

With very best regards,
Thorsten

 

 

 

[ringleheim]

I am an avid lover of ancient Roman history as well as Lego.

I've been in the real Flavian amphitheater many times.

I LOVE THIS SET.  I think the color is about as good as Lego could have done with their present color pallet.

Standard lego colors are not well suited to masonry projects anyway.

I've long thought about Lego doing one of these and this set is long overdue! 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2020 by ringleheim

[JintaiZ]

9 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

Take it from me.
I have lived in Rome for 39 years.
This is ugly
I am not an AFOL, I am a LEGO Enthusiast. I love LEGO. I wrote three LEGO books. I have a page in which I talk about LEGO daily.

And believe me, this is a very big letdown. 
I will never buy this set. 
It's like a parisien person that says you that he would never buy the Tour Eiffel.

And the GWP is the most ugly GWP I've ever seen. Brickbuilt horses, a MEDIEVAL helmet?

Sorry, I've been praising LEGO all days, but this is really UGLY.

Well... I understand how it feels. I really do. That said, it would have been almost impossible to make it at a proper scale; and I do think they've done their very best job. For the colors, the tan actually looks a lot better in real life than the pictures, so I'd recommend checking out a review.

And yet people from Florida buys the Disney Castle...

[jedisquidward]

7 hours ago, Itaria No Shintaku said:

No problem.
First of all, it totally looks the wrong scale. When you live in Rome and you see it twice per day, you can acnowledge that it's quite different. It's strechted. They made it less larger/wide than tall. It's too tall, or it's too narrow, whatever you want to put it. This is really problematic to me. It seems a different monument.
Then the actual Coliseum is not tan. Ok, that's not white either, but surely not tan. And there are also DARK TAN pieces. That doesn't work.
The GWP is one of the ugliest thing I have ever seen, but that's free at least.
There are bricklbuilt horses like in the Yellow castle and there is a "Roman" wearing a MEDIEVAL HELMET? 
Seriously...

When I heard the idea for this set I was really excited at first but seeing it in full doesn't instantly "wow" me the way a lot of big sets like the NES, Barracuda Bay, or Haunted House do. I'm reminded of the Taj Mahal; also the biggest when it was released, but a bit too plain and repeating with a dumbed down color palette. I don't think this one suffers from those factors AS much, but still. I took Latin throughout most of my school life so I love the concept, but I just don't know about this one.

[WesternOutlaw]

I'm not a huge fan of architectural sets but this is pretty impressive.

[Pisces no Aphrodite]

A great set, but the price bites !