Italian town 'forgets' Roman theatre found under ex-factory

An ancient Roman amphitheatre, in the town of Fano, in the Marche region, is slowly rotting away beneath an abandoned factory from the early 1900s.

“The original builders most probably knew what they were building on, but they were different times,” Fano engineer Salvatore Vittorio Russo told Corriere della Sera.

Today, laws prohibit sites of archaeological interest from being developed, something the building's owners – a consortium of local businessmen - discovered to their chargin.
Fifteen years ago they gained permission to turn the uncovered 1,830 square-metre ex-factory into 22 apartments.

“Before the project could get underway the council asked to perform a geophysical scan and found the remains of the theatre under the factory floor,” Russo explained.

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