Colosseum seeks floor champion
Italy is looking for a brilliant engineer to reinstall the arena floor of Rome’s Colosseum, complete with trapdoors and the hidden lifts that allowed wild animals to leap out and menace gladiators.
The culture ministry is offering the €10 million (NZ$17m) project to the designer who can turn the clock back 2000 years to when 35,000 Romans bayed for blood in the stadium.
‘‘We want to give an idea of how it was, and we are seeking proposals from around the world,’’ Colosseum director Alfonsina Russo said.
The arena opened in AD80 with 100 days of gladiator fights. But the Roman Empire crumbled, and the fights stopped at the end of the 5th century. The wooden arena floor rotted away, and the basement where wild beasts were once kept filled with earth.
Excavations began in the 19th century. Today, visitors can peer down from the seating into the subterranean rooms. With no arena floor, however, they have little sense of where the fighting took place, even though a small section has been replaced.
Officials want the whole floor installed again – but they also want it to be retractable.
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said he was looking for ‘‘ a high- technology solution that will give the visitor the chance to see the subterranean rooms . . . but also to appreciate the beauty of the Colosseum’’.
The new floor must be able to close quickly to protect the basement rooms from bad weather.
Sliding floors are only the first challenge, since the sections will also need trapdoors as well as lifts similar to those that hoisted animals to the arena floor.
One of the lifts was recreated in 2015, showing how lions and tigers could be lifted using ingenious pulley systems operated by slaves.
Russo said showing off the original techniques would be a good idea, but some lifts could be more hi- tech. ‘‘We could have some that work at the touch of a button and don’t need slaves.’’
One challenge will be managing the floodwaters that sometimes rise towards the original floor level when the stream that runs through the basement turns into a torrent.
Another challenge is ensuring that the new floor does not damage a single block of the original stonework. It cannot be bolted into the building and must be free standing, probably on pillars.
Time is tight, with applications due by February 1. Work is due to start next year, to be completed in 2022 or 2023.
One decision has already been made which may disappoint fans of the Oscar-winning film Gladiator. Despite earlier plans to bring back gladiators for mock battles, Russo said the ministry was aiming higher. ‘‘The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theatre – but no gladiator shows.’’