‘A sucker born every minute’: The man who duped tourists with a fake Greek amphitheater

Of the eight TripAdvisor reviews of the amphitheater near Arcugnano, in Italy’s northern Veneto region, all give fulsome, five-star praise.

“An enchanting place,” reads one review. “A world beyond space and time,” enthuses another. “Definitely one of the best places I have ever been to,” raves another. “Unique on the planet,” writes another visitor. That last one was prescient, because the theater certainly was unique. It wasn’t Greek, as it purported to be. It wasn’t even Roman. Instead, the “kind custodian” who was “more or less a historian, and an excellent narrator,” as one other visitor dubbed him, had built it himself. This month, after a 10-year legal battle, the owner has been jailed for forging works of art, carrying out building works without authorization, and destroying a protected landscape. The case has scandalized Italy, a country that just edges out China for the most UNESCO World Heritage sites and is home to many legitimate Greek and Roman theaters, from those of Syracuse and Pompeii, where productions are still staged each summer, to the amphitheater of Verona, 40 miles west of Arcugnano, which becomes a mega-stage for opera each summer. Franco Malosso, the owner, creator and self-styled discoverer of the nearly 54,000-square-foot “ancient” site, charged visitors up to 40 euros ($46) to visit the “theater” he had built from scratch.