Overview
- Architect Stefano Boeri’s design restores the semicircular piazza outside the arena by placing large travertine blocks exactly where the original pillars once stood to convey the arcades’ proportions.
- Visitors can sit on the new slabs and read reproductions of Roman numerals that identified seating sections for ancient spectators.
- Excavation for the piazza uncovered coins, statues, animal bones and a gold ring, with the nearby imperial passage used by Emperor Commodus noted as having opened to the public last year.
- Project officials say perimeter works were funded with compensatory resources from the recently completed metro expansion, which includes a station beneath the monument.
- Stone was sourced from the same regional quarries used in antiquity and carved by the four-generation Mariotti Carlo firm, with additional funding reported from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan alongside park budgets.