Colosseum gets a remake after 1500 years
The Colosseum in Rome is about to get its floor back after 1500 years, allowing visitors to stand on the spot where thousands of gladiators met a gory death.
The new €15 million (NZ$25 million) floor will feature revolving wooden slats that retract along runners, so that the arena can once again host events without permanently covering its ancient foundations. The ingenious floor has been designed by Italian architects who beat ten rival applicants in a competition to give the site a useable but removable option.
‘‘It’s very clever and I am very satisfied – this will give an idea exactly how the Colosseum once was,’’ said Alfonsina Russo, the site director, as the winner was announced yesterday.
After entertaining Romans for centuries with bloody contests between gladiators and wild animals, the curtain came down at the Colosseum at the end of the 5th century AD as the empire collapsed.
Soon the wooden arena floor vanished and earth began to fill the basement rooms where the animals were once kept.
That earth floor was slowly dug out at the end of the 19th century, meaning that modern visitors looking down from the tiered seating areas into the basement might struggle to imagine where the fighting once took place.
To fix that, Italy’s culture ministry asked architects to come up with a new floor to cover the 3000m2 space which would allow visitors to enter the arena while protecting the fragile remains beneath from the elements.
The solution supplied by the firm Milan Ingegneria involves a floor made of wooden slats which can be turned 90 degrees to a vertical position and then retracted along runners like a Venetian blind, opening apertures in the floor.
The runners will be positioned on top of the walls of the basement rooms below, while the floor – due to be ready by 2023 – will replace a small section of fixed arena floor which was installed in the 1990s.
‘‘The new project will be completely reversible – if in 30, 50 or 100 years there is the need or the desire to remove it, the monument can be returned to exactly how it is today,’’ said Massimiliano Milan, the chief architect.
To avoid the build-up of humidity or heat in the basement, which is due to open to the public, 24 ventilators will be able to change the air in the space every 30 minutes while it is covered.
‘‘The Colosseum was the only ancient arena to have a entirely wooden floor, which allowed the use of lifts and 60 trapdoors to introduce scenery, men and animals into the shows from the basement, and the new floor will allow the same effect,’’ said Russo.