A fake ancient Roman amphitheater near Vicenza, Italy, attracted paying tourists for about 20 years and appeared in an official travel guide before investigators exposed it as a modern construction. Franco Malosso, 69, promoted the hillside site as an ancient discovery. He is now serving a prison sentence after courts found that it was built without approval and presented as a historic monument.
The site, called the Berico Maritime Amphitheater, stands in Arcugnano, near Vicenza in northeastern Italy. Malosso said a landslide uncovered it in 2005. He claimed it dated to A.D. 393 and ranked among the oldest and largest amphitheaters in the world.
His account reached far beyond Roman history. Malosso said the area contained remains from the Neolithic, Greek and Roman periods. He also linked it to Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, saying Caesar stopped there while returning from Egypt.
Franco Malosso fooled tourists for nearly 20 years with a fake Roman amphitheatre near Vicenza, Italy. Visitors paid up to €40 to see what they believed was an ancient site, which even appeared in an official tourism guide and app.#Italy #Vicenza #Archaeology #Tourism pic.twitter.com/tlEuGy5ZEB
— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) August 2, 2026
Another part of the story placed Shakespeare’s Juliet in an old church at the site during her teenage years.
How a fake Roman amphitheater near Vicenza gained official trust
The claims contained clear problems. Caesar died hundreds of years before the date Malosso gave for the amphitheater. Shakespeare also placed the story of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, not Vicenza.
Even so, the site gained enough attention to appear in a local tourism guide and online app funded by the European Union. Visitors paid as much as 40 euros ($46) to enter. They walked among stone steps, columns, statues and other features presented as evidence of the ancient world.
Investigators later found that none of those structures were ancient. The steps were made from modern stone blocks that had been stacked, covered and treated to look old. Concrete columns, plaster statues, fiberglass parts and papier-mache decorations were placed around the site. An artificial pond was also dug into the hillside.
Satellite images showed that the land had been cleared and reshaped before the complex appeared. Residents told local media they had seen trucks carrying soil and concrete mixers moving through the area during years of work.
Police closed the site as the court case began
Questions about the site led to an investigation in 2016. Italy’s military police, local officers and cultural heritage experts examined the structures. They found no evidence of an ancient amphitheater. Authorities searched for records, seized documents and closed off an area covering about 5,000 square meters (53,800 square feet, or 1.24 acres).
Paolo Pellizzari, then the mayor of Arcugnano, said officials had mapped known and suspected archaeological sites across the town. No such structure had ever been recorded on that hillside. The town issued an order calling for the buildings to be removed and the land restored.
Vicenza Deputy Mayor Jacopo Bulgarini D’Elci compared the case to the public panic caused by Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds.” He described Malosso’s claims as an unusually large public hoax.
The criminal case continued for several years. A court in Vicenza convicted Malosso in May 2019 of illegal construction, forging works of art and creating structures without approval. He received a sentence of two years and four months in prison and a 3,000-euro ($3,420) fine. An appeals court upheld the decision in December 2020.
Malosso took his case to Italy’s highest court
Malosso’s lawyers then took the case to Italy’s highest court. They argued that too much time had passed to punish the building and environmental offenses. They also questioned whether the land was protected and said the imitation was too obvious to fool anyone.
The court rejected those arguments in December 2021. It found that construction work was still underway in July 2016 and that the site’s advertising could mislead people without specialist knowledge.
Judges also considered the size of the project, the damage to the land and the money earned from visits and events.
Prison followed as the restoration order remained unfinished
Malosso entered prison in 2026 after further efforts to avoid detention failed. The town of Arcugnano has sought about 560,000 euros ($638,000) in damages. Courts also ordered the removal of the unauthorized structures and restoration of the hillside.
The fake Roman amphitheater near Vicenza remained standing in the latest reports, despite that order. Its modern stones, statues and columns now mark the site of a tourism scheme that sold visitors an invented version of the ancient past.
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