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Rome's Colosseum Gets a Fresh Look that Recreates the Footprints of Long-Gone Columns
Restorers used travertine from original quarries to recreate the Colosseum’s semicircular piazza, attracting 9 million visitors in 2025, enhancing heritage and visitor experience.
- Earlier this year, restorers refurbished the Colosseum's semicircular piazza using travertine from the same ancient quarries, recreating column elements and allowing visitors to sit on large slabs where original pillars once stood.
- The semicircular piazza had long-lost arcades that collapsed over centuries from earthquakes; restorers dug roughly a meter to reach original travertine paving amid concurrent metro and archaeological projects reshaping the site.
- Excavations uncovered coins, statues, animal bones and a gold ring as workers reached the old paving; the Colosseum remains Italy's most popular tourist destination with 9 million visitors in 2025.
- Italian architect Stefano Boeri said the travertine blocks are placed exactly where original pillars were based to restore the arcades' proportions; officials linked the restoration to compensatory funds from the metro project.
- Fabrizio Mariotti, head of the Mariotti Carlo stonecutting firm, said Tuesday his family has carved travertine for four generations, and the same quarries continue supplying stone for modern religious buildings, banks and museums.
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19 Articles
19 Articles
Associated Press News+16 Reposted by 16 other sources
Rome's Colosseum gets a fresh look that recreates the footprints of long-gone columns
The Colosseum has a bright new look following a restoration using the same travertine marble of ancient Rome to recreate parts of columns from 2,000 years ago.
·United States
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Total News Sources19
Leaning Left10Leaning Right1Center5Last UpdatedBias Distribution63% Left
Bias Distribution
- 63% of the sources lean Left
63% Left
L 63%
C 31%
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