Fraudster built fake Roman amphitheatre and charged tourists £35 to visit

An Italian conman who built a fake Roman amphitheatre and charged tourists £35 to come and see it has been jailed.

Franco Malosso von Rosenfranz boasted that the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre near the north-eastern city of Vicenza was ‘the oldest and largest, among the most spectacular in the world’.

But the ancient artefact was not from 393AD as billed – it was actually built in the early 2000s using stuccoed blocks, plaster statues and columns crafted from fibreglass and papier-mache.

The self-described ‘philanthropist, entrepreneur and orchestra conductor’, 69, even fooled the local government, who included the site in a tourism promotion guide and app.

Molosso was rumbled in 2016 when a police investigation was launched and archaeologists were drafted in to examine the site, Corriere della Sera reported.

Satellite images revealed the recent change in the landscape and it was quickly noticed there was no ancient structure there.

He told tourists he discovered the area along with historical artefacts dating back to the Neolithic, Greek and Roman eras.

And according to his version of history, a whole cast of figures had visited the amphitheatre, including Julius Casar himself, who was said to have stopped by on his return from Egypt with Cleopatra.

Juliet Capulet was also claimed to have lived at an ancient church there, despite William Shakespeare’s play famously being set in Verona.

When the scam was uncovered, Vicenza’s deputy mayor Jacopo Bulgarini D’Elci decried it as ‘one of the most incredible hoaxes since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds’.

Malosso was jailed this week for illegal construction, forgery of works of art, and the production of artefacts without authorisation.

He was jailed for two years and four months and fined €3,000 fine. 

The Municipality of Arcugnano has also sought €560,000 in damages.

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