Visitors thought they were paying to see ancient Rome, but they were really touring a 20-year-old stage set. An Italian man, Franco Malosso, 69, has been sentenced to two years and four months in prison for forgery, illegal construction, and creating works without authorization, after building a fake Roman amphitheater in Vicenza, then charging tourists $45 to enter, reports Euronews. He claimed he'd discovered the Berico Maritime Amphitheatre dated to AD393 after a 2025 landslide unearthed it, and that it had hosted Julius Caesar fresh out of Egypt with Cleopatra and was linked to Juliet Capulet of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
Suspicions about the site began to emerge in 2016, and archaeologists called in by Italy's Carabinieri found fiberglass, papier-mache, and other modern materials, and satellite images showed Malosso—who El Pais notes went by "Franz Von Rosenfranz" in some social circles—had flattened a hill to construct it. When the scam was revealed, Vicenza's deputy mayor called it "one of the most incredible hoaxes since Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds,'" per the Telegraph.
Malosso, who got the site listed in an EU-funded tourism guide, was also fined $3,400, while the local council is seeking $635,000 in damages. "The case continues to provoke astonishment in Italy, where people wonder over how such an elaborate fiction could have been erected and maintained over time," notes El Pais. More here from that outlet on the clues that gave the scam away to archaeological experts in the field.
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