The Amphitheatre has the characteristic elliptical shape of this type of construction, with tiers of seating for the audience and an arena. Here gladiators fought each other or wild animals and sometimes fights between animals of the same or different species were held.

The audience was protected from possible wild animal attacks by a podium. The fragments of the podium exhibited here conserve part of a monumental inscription alluding to the Emperor Elagabalus (218-222 AD), under whose mandate the amphitheatre was completely renovated.

Below the arena there was a series of underground passageways used by the auxiliary services needed for the performances.

A system of counterweights was used to raise the cages containing wild animals, as well as the covers (velum) used to protect the area from the sun and rain.

Studies made of material excavated here allow us to date the construction to the period of the Flavian dynasty, in the second half of the 1st century AD.

In the year 259 AD the Bishop of Tarraco, St. Fructuosus and his deacons, Augurius and Eulogius, were martyred in the arena of the amphitheatre. To commemorate this act, a Visigothic basilica was built on the spot, and later, in the 12th century, the Romanesque church of Santa Maria del Miracle was built on the same site.