May 2nd, the Italian Ministry of Culture announced that new floors would be installed in the original competitive area of the Colosseum in Rome, a decision aimed at restoring the Colosseum to its original appearance and allowing visitors to see the ancient building from a gladiator’s perspective.
Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said the same day that this is an “extraordinary project”, the new floor will be paved with hundreds of wooden floors, a total area of 3000 square meters. When the new floors are laid, visitors can walk to the center of the Colosseum and admire the ancient building like visitors at the end of the 19th century.
The design shows that hundreds of wooden floors used to lay out the new floors of the Colosseum in Rome can be rotated individually to address the natural lighting and air circulation of the underground space, which was once home to gladiators and mammoths before competitive performances.
The center of the Colosseum was originally covered with wooden floors, and archaeologists removed most of them in the 19th century, revealing rooms and passageways that were originally hidden underground.
A company called Project Milan will design new floors for the Colosseum with a contract value of 18.5 million euros (about 144 million yuan). The new floor is expected to be operational by 2023.
Mr Franceschini said that when the new floors were laid, the Colosseum would be able to host cultural events and could be removed if the Colosseum’s design function changed in the future.
Built 2,000 years ago, the Colosseum was the largest amphitheatre of the Roman Empire. It used to have up to 70,000 seats for gladiator fights, executions and animal hunting, and the site could also be filled with water to recreate the surface of the sea.
