Italian conman jailed after building bogus Roman historical marvel and charging tourists to see it

An Italian conman has been jailed after building a fake Roman amphitheatre and charging people to visit.

Franco Malosso, who also goes by Franco Malosso von Rosenfranz, charged tourists €40 (£35) to visit a site which he described as the world's first open-air amphitheatre.

The Berico Maritime Amphitheatre, near the northeastern city of Vicenza, featured ruined columns, stone steps and statues and was claimed by the fraudster to have been built before 393 AD.

But it turned out the site, which supposedly was home to Neolithic, Greek and Roman artefacts, only dated back to the early 2000s.

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The 69-year-old fraudster has been sentenced to two year and four months for forging artworks, producing artefacts without authorisation and violating building codes.

In 2016, the Italian Carabinieri conducted an investigation into the site, authorised by the Vicenza prosecutor's office.

Archaeologists concluded there had been no ancient structures, and Malosso had levelled the hill himself.

The site was instead "simply stacked or stuccoed" blocks, a freshly excavated artificial lake, plaster statues and concrete columns "made of fiberglass, papier-mâché, or similar elements", according to Italian media.

Malosso told tourists a range of historical figures had visited the amphitheatre, claiming Julius Caesar had passed through the site.

He also claimed it was the original landing site of the first Venetians, an ancient church and even where Juliet Capulet - from the play Romeo and Juliet - lived as a teenager.

It had supposedly been unearthed in 2005 in a landslide, he also claimed.

The amphitheatre was sealed to the public in October 2016, shortly after the initial report questioning its authenticity.

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By that point the site had already fooled some - with a tourism guidebook recalled after dedicating several pages to the theatre, according to Italian outlet Finestre sull'Arte.

Malosso seems to have also undergone efforts to create an extensive fake history of the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre after the fraud was exposed, GB News has uncovered.

A March 2017 comment on a blog, seemingly posted by Malosso, detailed how there were "at least nine murders" by the mafia in an attempt to "take over the amphitheatre".

It also claimed that Malosso was targeted by the mafia and despite being "seriously injured, escaped death" and that his three-year-old son "disappeared".

In 2016, Malosso claimed in an interview the amphitheatre had first 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.

When the fraud was uncovered, Jacopo Bulgarini D’Elci, Vicenza's deputy mayor, said it was "one of the most incredible hoaxes since Orson Welles's War of the Worlds".

The municipality of Arcugnano is now seeking €560,000 in damages, while Malosso was handed a €3,000 fine and was previously ordered to clear the area.

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