As the gamut of profitable goods becomes stagnant and market competition reaches its limit, the final marketable aspect is experience. This is why high-end restaurants have turned into performance art shows. You can't really compete just on food anymore, you have to provide a unique experience. The future of commerce is selling experiences more than selling quality goods.
I don't know much about Italian politics but I assume Rome is strapped for cash as well as other major tourist locations featuring historical sites. I think the various orgs who own and run these sites are going to start doing this kind of stuff. They're going to turn the sites into unique locals for restaurants, venues, and other businesses. A restaurant in The Great Pyramid. A U2 concert in the Colosseum. A strip mall on Stonehenge.
Of course it won't happen fast and it won't be as gaudy starting out.
https://archive.is/5V4Yf#selection-991.0-995.244
One decision has already been made which may disappoint fans of Gladiator, the Oscar-winning film. Despite earlier plans to bring back gladiators for mock battles, Ms Russo said that the ministry was aiming higher. She said: “The arena will be used for high culture, meaning concerts or theatre but no gladiator shows.”
Yes it will start out as high-tech but historically respectful. Preserve the site, but offer some flexibility in how it's displayed. Only "high culture" allowed. So opera, theater, that kind of stuff. That is until a decade or two from now when Rome needs even more cash and they decide to start letting pop bands play there. If they can pull it off then other places will start doing it to make up revenue.
Sure this isn't super new. People have been exploiting these sites for centuries. But I feel a lot of them have been able to strike a balance between commercialization and being a museum. With everything going to shit though, I think things will tip into commercialization's favor and we're going to get billboards on the great wonders of the world. Or they'll slowly be chopped up and sold off to commercial/private interests. We're going to see a hiving off of culture the way we've seen it happen to all public interests.
I'm not against updating ancient spaces or adding some kind of use. It's just that before this is the top of a slippery slope. And when the bottom of that slope is a giant pile of money, then slipping isn't so bad. Again, I'm not familiar with Italian or Roman politics, so maybe they're genuinely good stewards and are in a tough spot. But all I can imagine is the wrong people jumping on this idea and commercializing these spaces. So you can't even get a break from it and immerse yourself in history without that too having to serve some for-profit goal.
Meh, if they can make it without damaging the building it's kinda cool... problem is they probably wont
Depends on how it is run, but historical sites such as this often do not run at a very big profit, even the Colloseum, or the profits end up ocvering for other less popular sites. Museums are notoriously underfunded everywhere in the world. Very often curators and the like are also looking at ways to bring more people in, both for profit but to inspire interest, promote culture, etc.
So yes, it is a capitalism move, because we live in a capitalism system, and things in it have to use the tools of capitalism in order to survive. Is it just a money-grab? Could be. But it could be a number of other things, perhaps a bit of all.
The Colosseum is at least meant for entertainment, it's not like a temple or something
They should fill it with water again and do stunt boat shows with crazy pyrotechnics
It's better than bulldozing family homes and businesses to build some dumb fucking football arena in the middle of the city.
It's definitely nuts though. I agree we'll see more of it if this goes well for them.
haha fucking hell
i mean i genuinely think its cool to use old things, even ancient and culturally important things, as they were intended. but modifying an ancient structure to use it more or less as intended but with modern technology just doesn't sit right with me. if they were planning to restore it using the same methods the romans used to build it, so that we can see more or less what it looked like originally, that would be badass, and i think the romans themselves would probably be far more pleased with that than the idea that their entertainment arena has become some delicate artifact left to crumble and be looked at from afar.
I live in rome and i can tell you we are very ficking much out of any form of cash imaginable
I got to hear the opera Turandot in Verona in a Roman amphitheater from the first century AD. You can byo wine in paper cups (no glass) and they hand out candles. The show starts at dusk with everyone lighting the candles. It's 10 euro a ticket and there's a youth hostel with many beds in a large room that has a curfew but let's you return after curfew if you see the opera and go straight back. Can't recommend it enough if you can get to Verona (by train!) after Covid is over.
It seems the difference between venues is Rome's Colosseum has fallen into disrepair over the centuries while the Verona one has been kept up, even through the outer ring was destroyed in an earthquake in 1117. I can see why they want to build a retractable floor and instead of restore it, because I imagine a restoration would be inaccurate and require mining of more stone and end up more expensive. There are more areas like an entire block or two that is a cat sanctuary among old roman building, or the ruins of the circus maximus, that if demolished for space it would be a great loss, moreso than restoring the Colosseum to functionality.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Arena
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/torre-argentina-roman-cat-sanctuary
I wonder how the acoustics are for that place. It's funny to me when people go see a live performance in Chicago, sit in the lawn for like a picnic or something and only to realize that you can't hear shit.
One of the best live concerts I've ever been to was in Verona Arena, seeing Leonard Cohen in 2012ish with my dad. Seeing a man in his late 70s play a nearly 4 hour show, with a great setlist, a band that was incredibly tight, and looked incredibly happy to be doing music was just an amazing experience overall.
That is until a decade or two from now when Rome needs even more cash and they decide to start letting pop bands play there.
I give it a year or two
A boss at an old job insisted on being social and invited my wife and I to have dinner with him and his boyfriend at a restaurant in Chicago called Alinea. What a scam, it was something like $800 a couple for pretty mediocre food served in the most ostentatious way someone could possibly imagine. That definitely jump started my radicalization; spending essentially multiple months' rent on maybe 600 calories per person just for an "experience" made me want to vomit.
I once had a friend whom we took out to sushi to try for the first time, he forked five pieces together and ate them all and said "I don't get it what's the big deal, I could of bought 10 McDoubles for this." We paid for him.
Not sure if this post is this energy or if Alinea is actually dumb.
As profit declines, and the need for more needs increases, we move from 'being', acquiring goods and experiences to change one's self, or attempt to, then move into 'having' (speak for itself, consumption and possession as identity), into 'seeming' (appearing to be a certain self through signals and signs). I think we have gone further past yet and come back around into 'being' again, where the sign and signifier have been swapped, and the attempt to appear as something other causes a transformation in the attempt. So the greatest Roman theater returns to its original purpose.
You're right and all that but they've done concerts in the Colloseum for ages, I think Elton John performed there lol, and they do like opera. Also it is meant to have a floor, I believe it before this had a permanent partial floor and it originally had a floor ofc. They also frequently do Christian services there which it wasn't built for. Actually it has over history variously been a marketplace, housing, different types of manufactories. A concert venue is more in line with the original purpose so is better for preservation (disuse and reuse of the materials being what left it looking like that). Also its original purpose was for slaves to fight animals in and concerts are sort of our version of that.
You know what really sucks: 200 years ago it was a total ruin, much of it coverered in soil; wildflowers were said to grow out of every wall on every tier, some wildflowers that could be found nowhere else, and at night in spring you could be assured if you went you would be alone among them. No flowers and no solitude there now. But still its in better condition because of these renovations, even if they are a stupid "public private partnership"
