At the beginning of 2026, a crowd gathered at Chester’s Roman Amphitheatre to bring in the New Year. Led by Gluteus Maximus, a fully armoured workout coach, Cestrians clad in hats, scarves and gloves chased the burn despite the ice and snow. This was Roman rumba.
Watching at home, underneath a blanket comprising Celebrations wrappers and Pringle crumbs, I thought, if you can’t join them, write about it. So, earlier this month, I marched over to the Deva Roman Experience in Chester, located underneath the famous Rows, where I chatted to Gluteus Maximus himself – also known as Rob Foulkes – and Liz Montgomery, senior curator at West Cheshire Museums.
First things first, what is a Roman workout?
Foulkes explains that, at its core, Roman rumba is “fairly light exercise that everyone can take part in. It’s nothing too strenuous. It’s accessible, you do what you can, it’s a fun workout with history facts thrown in between the exercises.”
He continues: “It started off really just as a bit of a wacky idea and then it seems to have spilled out and become a little bit bigger than expected, which is nice. The idea first came from a Roman boot camp thing, before the team decided that a rumba class had a slightly more fun and interesting flavour. I suppose it’s quite eye-catching to call it that.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting there to be anyone turning up when we first did it. Like, is anyone really wanting to do this as a concept? So when quite a few people turned up, it was actually quite surprising. We ran it a couple of times through [last] summer and it seemed to have a nice bit of attraction. Recently, Liz, through the Grosvenor Museum, got us to do a gladiator rumba, which is basically the same thing but more gladiator-themed, as part of their gladiator exhibition, and it sort of expanded from there on in really.”
Roman fitness
At Chester’s Grosvenor Museum, Montgomery often collaborates on events with the Deva Roman Experience, run by Foulkes and his colleagues at Big Heritage. She says that the last time Roman rumba took place, “people did it in their coats, it was thick with snow. There was snow everywhere. It’s so eye-catching because it’s in the amphitheatre out in the open, there’s loads of people walking past too who just stumble on this gang of people led by a Roman fitness instructor, it’s really good for the city. It is fun and exciting.”
Image courtesy of Rob Foulkes
Foulkes says: “You get the people who book onto it, and you can also just turn up, but it’s funny because people who are just walking past decide they want to take part. There’s some people, I think, who want to take part in it ironically, and then they start getting into it. We’ve had several return visitors. It’s a bit of fun, it’s a freebie, you can do as much or as little as you like, and it’s just a little bit different, you can talk to people afterwards about history too.”
I was curious to hear about the soundtrack to this workout.
Foulkes says: “I start off with a little bit of music typically from the film Gladiator, but there’s only so much of that you can take. You can’t really do much working out to Hans Zimmer, and then it’s all 90s dance hits from then on.”
We chat about the idea of Roman versions of pop songs and Foulkes tells me about his sister site, Sick To Death, a Chester attraction which explores the gory history of medicine.
“At Sick To Death, they have what you call bard-core style music. It’s quite fun because you have people walking through, and then you have that sort of moment of recognition when you go, wait a second, I know this song, but it’s being played by a minstrel. So the Roman rumba thing, it could be 2 Unlimited done on the lyre.”
Modernity aside, did the Romans exercise?
Montgomery says: “Just across the way from Deva, underneath the Bridge Street Café, are the remains of the Roman bathhouse. That’s where the Romans went, not just to keep clean but to exercise as well, and they had a big – it’s called a palestra – like a big gym where they’d throw heavy, weighted balls or they’d do sit-ups, crunches, running and that sort of thing. It was really important to them to keep fit and to keep their bodies healthy so they didn’t get diseases and things like that, and so they were strong enough to carry their armour. So they did do exercise, and they had to walk 25 miles a day when they were on the move with all of their kit on.”
Meanwhile, the Roman diet was carb-heavy.
“Diet for gladiators was actually heightened carbs,” says Foulkes. “It’s almost, weirdly enough, vegan in some respects. Meat did feature in the diets, but not all the time. It was really expensive, but the concept was that the gladiators should develop a certain degree of subcutaneous fat on the body. They shouldn’t have rippling muscles because the idea was that if they got cut, they could bleed quite a lot, but they wouldn’t be cutting into any lean body tissue.”
Main image: courtesy of Rob Foulkes
Roman rumba is free to attend and takes place in Chester throughout the year, usually on special holidays like New Year’s Day and May and October half-terms, and as part of Chester Heritage Festival.
