New floor for the Colosseum should open doors into the past

Italy is looking for a brilliant ­engineer to reinstall the Colosseum arena floor, complete with trapdoors and the hidden lifts that allowed wild animals to leap out and menace gladiators.

Part of the Colosseum of Rome will be rebuilt. Picture: AFP

Italy is looking for a brilliant ­engineer to reinstall the Colosseum arena floor, complete with trapdoors and the hidden lifts that allowed wild animals to leap out and menace gladiators.

The Italian culture ministry is offering the €10m ($16.1m) 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 empire crumbled and the fights stopped at the end of the fifth century. The wooden arena floor rotted away and the basement where wild beasts were once kept filled with earth. Excavation began in the 19th century. Today visitors can peer down from the seating into the subterranean rooms.

But with no arena floor, 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 also want it to be retractable.

Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator. Picture: Universal / Getty Images

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini said he was looking for “a hi-tech solution that will give the visitor the chance to see the subterranean rooms ... but also to appreciate the beauty of the ­Colosseum”.

The ministry said that the 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. Ms Russo said that showing off the original techniques would be a good idea.

The victorious engineer must “lift the lid on the secrets of the complex organisational machine behind the shows”, the culture ministry said.

Ms Russo said that some lifts could also be more high-tech. “We could have some that work at the touch of a button and don’t need slaves,” she added.

One challenge will be managing the flood waters 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 floor does not damage a single block of the original stone work. It cannot be bolted into the building and must be free standing, probably on pillars. Work is due to start next year, and completed in 2022 or 2023.

One decision has already been made that may disappoint fans of the Oscar-winning film Gladiator.

Despite earlier plans to bring back gladiators for mock battles, Ms Russo said that the ministry was aiming higher. She said: “The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theatre but no gladiator shows.”

The Times