Franco Malosso ‘von Rosenfranz’ claimed that the Roman amphitheatre near Vicenza, Italy, was the world’s oldest but an investigation found the ‘ruins’ dated back to the 2000s
An Italian conman has been jailed after building a fake Roman amphitheatre and charging visitors £35.
Franco Malosso ‘von Rosenfranz’ claimed that the site was the world’s oldest open-air amphitheatre near Vicenza, which had ruins of columns, stone steps and statues which he said had been built before 393 AD.
But an investigation found that the supposed ancient artefacts actually only dated back to the early 2000s and used materials including fibreglass and papier-mâché to make them appear old – while he had also made the lake himself.
Malosso, 69, would tell tourists elaborate tales of historical figures who would attend his amphitheatre including Roman Emperor Julius Caesar who passed through.
And he even claimed it was where Juliet Capulet, from the play Romeo and Juliet, set in Verona, lived as a teenager.
The fraudster described himself as a “philanthropist, entrepreneur and orchestra conductor” which might all sound far fetched but he was able to even fool the local government to the extent it was included in a tourism app that were funded by the EU.
Malosso said that he had discovered the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre and found it had Neolithic, Greek and Roman artefacts after it had been exposed in a landslide in 2005, reported the Corriere della Serra.
Promotional material claimed the amphitheatre was “the oldest and largest, among the most spectacular in the world”.
The elaborate fraud began to unwind when police began an investigation in 2016 leading to archaeologists concluding there had been no ancient structures, and Malosso had levelled the hill himself.
But rather than confess, he made even more wilder claims to try and mislead the police with a blog post in 2017, appearing to be from him, where he said that there were “at least nine murders” by the mafia in an attempt to “take over the amphitheatre”.
In the blog post it also claimed that Malosso had been targeted by the mafia and despite being “seriously injured, escaped death” while his three-year-old son “disappeared”.
And in 2016, Malosso also claimed the amphitheatre had been restored in the 19th century. “An initial restoration project was carried out in 1870, with a second, more recent one between the late 1980s and early 1990s,” he told Il Giornale di Vicenza.
The legal case has dragged on for 10 years and he has now finally been jailed over charges of illegal construction, forgery of works of art, and the production of artefacts without authorisation. He was sentenced to two years and four months in prison and a €3,000 fine. He was also ordered to clear the area.
