Ontario Construction News staff writer
Rome’s Colosseum is getting a brand-new $22 million retractable floor that will provide visitors with a look into the past.
Culture Minister Dario Franceschini says the new floor will allow visitors to stand in the arena and experience a view of the Colosseum like the ancient gladiators would have seen it during their battles, The Associated Press reported.
The retractable floor is due to be completed in 2023.
The renovation plan was created by Milan Ingegneria, the winner of a design competition from the Italian government in 2020. The design involves hundreds of wooden slats that can be rotated to allow natural air and light into the spaces beneath the Colosseum.
The Colosseum reopened to the public last week, after a 41-day shutdown caused by coronavirus regulations. The ancient Roman Colosseum is once again going to have a floor thanks to a new, hi-tech project announced Sunday.
“It is an extraordinary project,” Franceschini said in a news release, detailing the plans to create a flexible floor to give tourists a clearer idea of how the arena would have looked when gladiators fought to the death there.
“You will be able to walk on it and go to the centre of the Colosseum, seeing it in the same way as visitors used to up to the end of the 19th century,” Franceschini said.
The original floor was removed by archaeologists to get a better glimpse of the labyrinth of rooms and corridors below the arena. It was never fully replaced.
Italian engineering firm Milan Ingegneria won the 18.5 million euro ($22.2 million) contract to design the new floor and has committed to complete the project by 2023.
A wooden platform will be built with hundreds of slats that can be rotated to bring natural light into the underground chambers that once used to house the gladiators and animals before their deadly combat.
The Colosseum is Italy’s most popular tourist attraction, drawing some 7.6 million visitors in 2019, before the coronavirus struck.
Built 2,000 years ago, the stone arena was the biggest amphitheatre in the Roman empire. It used to have up to 70,000 seats and hosted gladiator fights, executions and animal hunts. It could also be filled with water to re-enact sea battles.
“A project that, with innovative construction techniques, use of appropriate materials and refined analysis methodologies, will allow to guarantee safety, functionality and construction economy which, in addition to restoring the original image of the monument and its functioning as a complex scenic machine, will also allow to strengthen protection and conservation, in particular to protect underground structures,” Franceschini said.
The top surface will be constructed with Accoya wood obtained with a process that increases resistance and durability: a sustainable choice that avoids the killing of valuable species, the news release explains.
Some portions of the floor will be built with mobile panels which will rotate to guarantee flexibility and make it possible to open the underground structures for natural lighting.
The new floor will protect the underlying structures from atmospheric agents, reducing the water load with a rainwater collection and recovery system that will feed the public toilets of the monument.