The real value of one of the world’s most well-recognized historic sites is now officially set after the global financial consultancy Deloitte published their assessment of Rome’s ancient Colosseum on Monday.
According to Deloitte, the nearly 2,000-year-old Flavian amphitheater is worth exactly $79 billion. Its estimate is derived principally from responses to a survey that begged Italians a variety of questions pertaining to the perception of the Colosseum, of which the overwhelming majority — $75 billion — was ascribed to “social value.”
Romans in the survey placed an outsize value ($91 over $57) compared to their countrymen when asked about the monetary amount they would contribute per year to ensure the preservation of the first-century relic. Around 87% said it was the most important monument in Italy. Some 70% think the entire world should be tasked with financing its ongoing upkeep, which racked up a nearly $30 million tab in its latest iteration.
(For context’s sake, some guesses have it that it took the equivalent of between $250 million and $1 billion to construct the Colosseum in today’s money.)
“The value of an iconic, historical and cultural site such as the Colosseum, to which different dimensions of value can be attributed is objectively complex to determine,” Deloitte’s Marco Vulpiani said of the research team’s method. “[It] can be analyzed through a quantification of the different configurations of value, ranging from the economic contribution, the indirect use value, and the social asset value, where the latter mainly represents its existence value for the society.”
The full report, which is written in Italian, can be found here. Deloitte says it’s on a mission to provide a full-service “evaluation and enhancement of works of art and, more generally, cultural heritage,” that will include other important monuments in the country. The Colosseum documentation being any guide, they are sure to find evidence of their significance to the broader global conception of culture. Furnishing proof, as the company’s CEO Fabio Pompei put it, that “Italy is a protagonist in the world.”
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Posted on December 2, 2013Colosseum ‘built with loot from sack of Jerusalem temple’
THE Colosseum, the huge Roman amphitheatre used for animal shows and gladiatorial combat, was built with the spoils of the sack of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, a new archaeological find suggests.
A recently deciphered inscription was made public yesterday as organisers prepared for an exhibition on the monument, opening next week. A feature of the show is a large, altar-like stone with a chiselled Latin inscription, which tells how a senator, Lampaudius, had the Colosseum restored in AD 443.
But holes still visible in the surface clearly corresponded to different lettering, this time in bronze, which had been previously fitted into the stone. After a long study, Prof Geza Alfoldy of Heidelberg University, working with Italian archaeologists, deciphered the puzzle. He concluding that the original inscription read: “Imp. T. Caes. Vespasianus Aug. Amphitheatrum Novum Ex Manubis Fieri Iussit.”
The translation is: “The Emperor Caesar Vespasian Augustus had this new amphitheatre erected with the spoils of war. There is no doubt what war this was, the sack of Jerusalem,” said Cinzia Conti, the director of surface restoration at the Colosseum, yesterday.
Ms Conti said the Emperor Titus inaugurated the Colosseum in AD 80 with 100 days of festivities, but his father, Vespasian, had first opened it in AD 79, shortly before he died, when it was still unfinished. The original bronze lettering on the stone altar would have been made for the original opening.
The sack of Jerusalem occurred in Vespasian’s reign in AD 70, when a revolt by the Jews was crushed and Jerusalem was captured by Titus. The temple was destroyed and a million people were said to have died in the siege. The Arch of Titus, at the end of the Roman Forum nearest to the Colosseum, commemorates the victory, and bas-reliefs show Roman soldiers making off with booty from the temple.
Two years after the sack of Jerusalem, in AD 72, work on the Colosseum, officially known as the Flavian Amphitheatre, began.
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