‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheater
- Franco Malosso was jailed this month following a 10-year legal battle for building a fake archaeological site near Arcugnano, Italy, where he forged works of art and carried out unauthorized construction on protected landscape.
- Malosso ordered local builders to construct the nearly 54,000-square-foot theater, instructing them to "make it look old," though the traditional tiered seating was built by 21st-century workers using machines, not ancient Greeks.
- The Carabinieri's Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Artistico , known in English as the "art squad," easily debunked the site in a single-day inspection, where Malosso had told visitors that Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Juliet Capulet visited.
- Italy's Corte di Cassazione rejected Malosso's final appeal, upholding a 28-month jail term and fines of 3,000 euros plus 3,500 euros in legal fees.
- Arcugnano's mayor stated he would not spend public money to remove the site, leaving its demolition uncertain as archaeologist Darius Arya warned the cleanup will be an expensive job.
13 Articles
13 Articles
“There’s Always Someone Who Falls for It”: the Fake Greek Amphitheater that Fooled Tourists in Italy
Of the eight TripAdvisor reviews of the amphitheater near Arcugnano in the Veneto region of northern Italy, all bestowed effusive five-star praise. “A charming place,” one review reads. “A world beyond space and time,” exclaims another. “Without a doubt, one of the best places I’ve ever been,” another enthusiastically comments. “One of a kind on the planet,” writes yet another visitor. That comment proved prophetic, for the theater was indeed un…
Italian Man Duped Tourist For Years With DIY “Ancient” Amphitheatre
[Image: Facebook] Turns out you don’t need archaeologists to discover a “2,000-year-old” amphitheatre, just concrete, fibreglass and a good story. An Italian man has been jailed for building a fake ancient amphitheatre from scratch, dressing it up as a Neolithic, Greek and Roman archaeological marvel, and then charging tourists up to €40 (around R750) a head to walk through it. Franco Malosso, who also goes by “Franz von Rosenfranz”, spent years…
‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheatre
The case has scandalized Italy, a country that just edges out China for the most UNESCO World Heritage sites and is home to many legitimate Greek and Roman theatres, from those of Syracuse and Pompeii, where productions are still staged each summer, to the amphitheatre of Verona, 40 miles west of Arcugnano, which becomes a mega-stage for opera each summer.
For years, the amphitheatre of Arcugnano, near Vicence, attracted the crowds by its colonnades and supposedly ancient statues. But everything was false, the site having been entirely built by the owner of the place. Italian justice has just condemned the forger to destroy his work.
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