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 €10 million project to the designer who can turn the clock back 2,000 years to when 35,000 Romans bayed for blood in the ancient stadium.
“We want to give an idea of how it was and we are seeking proposals from around the world,” Alfonsina Russo, the director of the Colosseum, said.
From its dramatic opening in AD80 when Romans were entertained with 100 days of gladiator fights, to the mock naval battles staged by flooding the arena, the Colosseum was a byword for gory showstoppers.
But
