The Italian government is looking for private sponsors to help pay for restoration work on the famous Colosseum in Rome in exchange for advertising rights.

A string of collapses at the nearby forum have also raised fears about visitor safety and whether the buildings can remain standing for much longer.

However the dire state of public finances in Italy, one of the most heavily indebted countries in Europe, means that funds are short and the government is having to turn to private investors to plug the 25 million euro ($32 million) gap.

“It’s a remarkable experiment,” said Francesco Giro, the undersecretary for Italy’s heritage ministry, which is running the tender with Rome’s city council.

“If all goes to plan, by 2013 the Colosseum will have been cleaned from top to bottom but even more important, it will be fully accessible to visitors,” he said.

The restoration project will see visitors offered multimedia tours of relatively unexplored areas, from the maze of underground chambers where the gladiators and wild animals were kept, to the uppermost terraces with their spectacular views.

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Tourists visiting Rome will soon be allowed underneath the Colloseum to see where Gladiators prepared for fights and where the animals they fought were caged.

Tourists will soon be able to visit the underground of the Colosseum, where gladiators once prepared for fights and lions and tigers were caged before entertaining a bloodthirsty public.

Rome culture officials said Wednesday that, after several months of work to make the area safe for visits, the public will be allowed to add the underground section to tours of the arena starting in late summer. No exact date has been set.

Architect Barbara Nazzaro told Associated Press Television News that tourists will be able to see the spaces where lions, tigers and bulls were kept in cages before they were hoisted on elevators to ground level for entertainment in the ancient arena.

Elephants were too heavy for the rope-hoisted elevators. They made their grand entrance into the Colosseum through main gates.

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Three large chunks of mortar have fallen off from Rome’s famous Colosseum. Luckily, no one was hurt.

The pieces, covering a total of about a square meter (about 10 square feet), occurred about 6 a.m. Sunday, hours before the ancient arena opens to the public.

Archaeology official Roberto Cecchi said the area involved was already scheduled for maintenance and will be further inspected on Monday.
Meanwhile, the area has been cordoned off and the monument is open as usual for visits.

Although engineers have described the Colosseum as showing extraordinary resistance over the centuries, it is closely monitored.

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An unusual sheet-metal coffin, made from a 360kg slab of lead, has been unearthed just outside Rome. [Thx Kristen]

The gravesite at Gabii, a once-thriving city-state located about 20 kilometres from the centre of old Rome, is prompting speculation by experts that a great gladiator, beloved bishop or some other notable figure from the third century AD was given the rare honour of a sheet-metal burial.

“All we can say so far about the contents is that the lead wrapping contains a human skeleton – or at least a portion thereof – as there is visible bone at the open, foot-end of the sarcophagus,” McMaster University archeologist Jeffrey Becker, managing director of the U.S.-led dig at Gabii, told Canwest News Service.

“Once we assess the contents, we will make a plan of how to study them, but we are interested in studying any human remains inside.”

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The palace of Sextus Tarquinius, the prince who sparked the revolt that led to the foundation of the Roman empire may have been found 12 miles from Rome.

The remains of what might have been the residence of the Etruscan prince Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last legendary king of Rome Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), have been found on the slopes of an extinct volcanic crater about 12 miles from Rome, Italian archaeologists have announced.

The palace was discovered on the site of the ancient acropolis of Gabii, where, according to legend, Rome’s mythical founders, Romulus and Remus, were educated. The building dates to the sixth century B.C and boasts the highest intact walls from the period ever found in Italy, standing at around 6.56 feet high.

“The dig has shown that the richly decorated monumental roof was dismantled, and the building filled with rubble. This has been a blessing, since it has allowed the palace to remain virtually intact,” archaeologist Marco Fabbri of Rome’s Tor Vergata University, told Discovery News.

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